The Disoriented Express

Padang Province, Sumatra

I make no apology for it! I am a train tragic. In 1992, I traveled on an old steam train in West Sumatra. Indonesia under the Dutch had a fantastic rail network. Pre WWII it even had the record for the world’s fastest scheduled service: Jakarta to Surabaya. In the 1990s, the service was two hours slower, if it was on time, which was rare.

Speed was not a consideration in West Sumatra. I turned up at the Padang station to board the newly inaugurated steam tourist railway serving the Padang to Pariaman route in West Sumatra. Unfortunately, the steam engine was not working. So they had provided a small diesel, one that usually brought coal from Sawah Lunto to the port in Padang: a one hundred and thirty odd kilometer journey that took ten hours.

Why? Well there was a section of rack railway to negotiate and the engine only had the capacity to trundle up with one carriage at a time full of coal. So if you had six carriages (which was all you had) it took forty minutes to take one carriage up, twenty to come back for the next one and so on. Get the picture? I was disappointed as the steam locomotive they were trying to restore was a beauty: an E1060 which was the last product of Germany’s famed Esseligent Company in 1966. It was one of the only two of its kind in the world, with the other one in Switzerland: or so I was told.

One thing I could never get used to in Indonesia was the fact that so much fuss and bother was taken to announce the departure of a train. The rule of thumb was: the slower and less important the train, the more ostentatious was the announcement of its departure.

The Padang tourist train was the lulu of them all! The announcement of its departure must have taken five minutes. Eventually we rumbled off at a speed which local children could easily match without breaking into a trot. The line bucked and twisted in such an alarming way that I imagined it could be used as a thrill ride if we went only five kilometer per hour faster: either that, or the trip was being sponsored by the Padang Chiropractors’ Association who needed more business.

The ticket collector came round regularly to make sure we had everything in order and that I was not sitting in the wrong class apartment. As the only Caucasian on the train, that would have been embarrassing! As for the regular checks, we were traveling at such a slow speed that he had to check that no lame people or men on crutches had been able to chase us and climb on board and get a free ride.

The branch line to Pariaman left the main line to the coal fields about thirty kilometers (and ninety minutes) out of Padang. We crawled at disabled snail’s pace to Pariaman. Looking ahead, I could not even see the rails. They were covered in grass and weeds. I hoped that no one had flogged any of the rails, though had we derailed, at three kilometers per hour, it would have been no disaster.

We straggled into Pariaman three and a half hours after leaving Padang. Total distance? Forty kilometers.

They gave us three hours to explore the delights of Pariaman. It took me five minutes. My idea of fun had little to do with drinking endless cups of tea in a fly blown warung. In any case, I could not find a massage parlor. I took the bus back. It took thirty minutes, but I still love trains.