Gallery: The end of the line for Singapore's Tanjong Pagar railway station

June 30 marked one of Singapore's blackest historical days yet: The closure of an art deco gem

By Kate Hodal 3 August, 2011

Tanjong Pagar Railway Station was officially opened on May 3, 1932 by the then governor Sir Cecil Clementi. Four marble reliefs, carved by Italian sculptor Rudolfo Nolli, stand guard over the station, representing Agriculture, Commerce, Transport and Industry, said to be the four pillars of the Malaysian and Singaporean economies. Above them are the initials FMSR (Federated Malay States Railways).

For a train station that had lost many of its passengers to cheap and fast bus services, Tanjong Pagar was filled with locals and visitors prior to its June 30 closure. Many were buying tickets up to Johor Bahru for a day-long return journey. Others were planning longer "road trips" into the wilds of Malaysia. "For a country that can't really offer road trips, I'm using the train as my road trip," said one 20-something student. "I'm going up to Segamat with some friends, and we're going to see where our journey takes us."

Ali Nachia Biryani Dam (renowned for "the best biryani south of India") proprietor Mohamed Ali, 60, took time out from preparing 800 servings for a quick coffee. His stall -- which he ran with his wife Nachia -- saw a 200 percent jump in sales in the last two weeks of June. "This place is not only historical, it has ambience," he said. "Families, Respect Riders, taxi drivers, police -- in fact all walks of life, from the rich to the poor, the lowest educated to the highest educated -- come here to relax and enjoy the food." Ali has since opened a branch in Tanjong Pagar Plaza (Blk 5, #02-04).

Whilst some visitors to the old station were keen to admire the building's architecture, others wanted to hike the tracks before they, too, disappear for ever. Here, on a walk led by Margie Hall of the Nature Society, visitors learned the ecological significance of the 20-kilometer "green corridor" that stretches from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands. Since the railway's closure on June 30, removal work of the railroads means that only a three-kilometer stretch from Rifle Range to Rail Mall remained open until the end of July.

According to online campaign coalition The Green Corridor (www.thegreencorridor.org), the railway land is almost three times the size of the Botanical Gardens, and nearly one-quarter the entire size of Singapore. Because the corridor is comprised of grasslands, small fruit and vegetable farms, secondary forest growth, and canals, streams and marshlands, nature lovers and activists alike hoped to keep it as a reserve. But many presume the government has already earmarked the land for development.

Tourists from all over Singapore -- and the world -- headed to Tanjong Pagar in its final days as a working station. Here, Debbie Tan, 31, and Royston Han, 30, both schoolteachers, spent a few hours one Monday afternoon posing for their wedding pictures. "This is just our dress rehearsal," said Tan. "We're doing it here partly out of nostalgia -- I used to take the train a lot as a kid and didn't want to miss this opportunity -- and partly because the scenery is quite nice."

Inside the station, rubber tiles depicted typical Malayan scenes of rice planting, rubber tapping, tin mining, shipping and bullock transport. According to the National Library Board of Singapore, the station's second and third floors once housed a 34-room, five-star hotel that, over its 60-year history, was frequented by Malaysian royalty and tourists alike. When the hotel closed in 1993, however, the upper rooms were left to fall into disrepair; squatters and stray animals have been the only guests since.

"This place is like one big kampong, where everyone feels like family," said Mahmood Dulhasam, 70, whose brother and four grandchildren have helped him run the main drinks stall and co-landlord all the food stalls for the past 30 years. "I've been looking for somewhere to move us all to at once, so we can stay together, but I haven't had much luck. I don't want to retire, but I might have to."

"We want to stay together because we all have different regular customers -- if we split up then we won't see all their faces anymore," said Kelsom Binti Ishmael, preparing one of Bombay Food Catering's S$0.60 chapattis on the day the restaurants closed (June 26). Customers queued for the homemade chapattis for up to an hour in the month leading up to Tanjong Pagar's closure.

Families gathered together for Roti John, Teh-C and a bit of nostalgia, in the last days before the restaurants closed. KTMB southern region manager Tariq Umar said: "Tanjong Pagar is the last piece of Malaysia in this city. You walk through those doors, you're no longer in Singapore. It doesn't look like Singapore, doesn't feel like Singapore, doesn't sound like Singapore. It's very sad to see this go."

"I've spent 27 years working here, so I'm very, very, very sad to be leaving," said station porter Azman Muji, seen here about to set the control levers for the arriving train from Segamat. "I moved my wife and my two boys up to Johor Bahru a few weeks ago. Everything's packed up, everything's over, everything's gone."

On June 28, as tourists wandered among the now-empty spaces of the food hall, metal recycler Mohamed Ali was busy dismantling the 600 kilos of metal of each stall. "I used to take the train all the time," he said. "It was a great way to see my family on the Thai border."

Not all the visitors at the station were sad to see it go. Waiting for his son to come off one of the last trains into Tanjong Pagar, 58-year-old Philip Siew said people were being "too sentimental" about the station's closure, including wanting to see "relics" like the signal levers here at Bukit Timah saved in a museum. "This is a joyous occasion," he said. "The railway has been a hindrance to development for too many years. Maybe now we can have more housing or port development -- we really need the space."

Bukit Timah's assistant station manager, Abdul Ghani, takes a call from Woodlands advising him that a passenger train will soon be arriving. For the past 79 years, all railway activities have been recorded by hand. "For the past five years I've been here, this has been a one-man show," said Ghani. "I used to get quite lonely. Now everyone wants to come take a look." Around 200 to 300 people have been visiting the station for the past six months, he said, among them locals and visitors from Italy, Japan, Korea and China.

Handing over the key token to the train conductor -- a practice to ensure safety on a single track -- Ghani, a KTM employee for the past 25 years, would typically work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., or 3 p.m. till 11 p.m., his main duty being to receive incoming and outgoing trains. A dozen passenger trains and two cargo trains would pass in a day, carrying cement, sugar, bricks and empty ship containers. "Now that I won't be splitting my days between Johor Bahru and Singapore anymore, my family is quite happy. But I'll miss all my friends here in Singapore."

A Malaysian train conductor checks passports on Train No.15, the last train to ever pull into Tanjong Pagar station. Sentimentalists, eager to "ride a bit of history", sipped Champagne and discussed the future. Singaporean resident Jonathan Boonzaier kept the spirit alive with a blowhorn, Malaysian-born Jagadir Singh, 70, quietly watched as the dusky sky turned black. "This train is a link with the past -- when the only way to get to the outback was to jump on or off a carriage, or take a little steamer all the way up to Malaysia," he said. "Now, sadly, that link is snapped forever.

Driving the last train back to Malaysia at 11pm on June 30, the Sultan of Johor, Ibrahim Iskandar, faced heavy crowds on his way to his 12-carriage train. One carriage was devoted solely to KTV, and another bore a lavish-looking dining room for Johor royalty. The Sultan was joined by KTM staff, train enthusiasts and journalists from Singapore and Malaysia.

In the final hour before its closure, souvenir hunters hungry for a piece of nostalgia stole into the station's dark rooms to take home a bit of history instead. "My grandfather used to work here, before my time," said Rishi Raj, 21, who found, in one of the rooms, a poster on the "Do's and Don'ts" of boarding a train. "I'm going to go home, wash it up, and hang it up. My aunt has taken a few too."

At 11:55 p.m., station manager Mohamed Ayob Embung was still boxing up papers whilst fielding questions from journalists and the public. "I'm not ready to go, no," he lamented. "I've got to be out of here in five minutes. I'm not sure that's going to happen. It's a lot to think about right now."

Bloggers had speculated if anyone would take a last stand and refuse to budge when closing time closed in. Apart from this one exhausted traveler, however, everyone else passed silently through Tanjong Pagar's closing doors like ghosts in the memory of a dream. When the station's doors shuttered down loudly at 12:05 a.m., with them went another piece of Singapore's history.

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Before Changi Airport, before Woodlands even, there was Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, an art deco gem that was Singapore's Grand Central. Over the decades, millions tramped its dusty halls and platforms, headed across the causeway to Malaysia or arriving in Singapore -- perhaps as new immigrants -- at the end of a long journey.

The station survived World War II and witnessed not a few marriage proposals; many spent the bulk of their working lives here; and legend has it that ghosts stalk its upper floors. When all is said and done, Tanjong Pagar station was part of the fabric of Singaporean life rather than simply a transportation terminus.

But now that the station has closed -- as part of a handover deal with the Malaysian government which operated the railway -- many wonder what will happen to this building, which has been earmarked for conservation.

In September 2010, Singapore and Malaysia agreed to a land swap deal which would see plots in Tanjong Pagar, Kranji, Bukit Timah and Woodlands traded back to Singapore for land in Marina South and Ophir-Rochor.

The land has since been valued at billions of dollars, and passengers planning to travel anywhere by the Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB ) train will have to board at the bland-looking Woodlands Checkpoint.

For the sentimentalists among us -- and Singapore harbors many -- the loss of the railway line, which cut through the landmass like an artery, is indicative of the government's lightspeed move towards the future, where there is no time or space for nostalgia.

So here, in stark black and white, are images that we may wish to remember.

Whether the buildings of yesteryear are actually converted into museums, coffee shops, hotels or nightclubs, may these visuals leave you with a lasting memory of Singapore's history.

Freelance photojournalist Kate Hodal has filed copy from steaming volcanoes in Iceland, the Prime Minister's office in Tuvalu and the deforested jungles of the Amazon. When she's not behind the lens or in front of the screen, she can be found madly dashing away on those other keys -- the piano's -- or singing along with the buskers on Orchard Road.

Gallery: The end of the line for Singapore's Tanjong Pagar railway station

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