I guess nothing like your stories but mine was a Yangon to Mandalay and return trip I did in about 1989.
I was Trade Commissioner in Bangkok and responsible for Myanmah so had to visit Mandalay to see what was happening.
My wife was Community Liaison officer in Bangkok and also responsible for Embassy staff in Yangon.
We travelled by train as Air Myanmah had lost 4 Fokker Fellowships in the previous year and one had gone down with an Embassy staff family killed.
In Myanmah they had at that time Alsthom diesels given by France but quite old rolling stock , with still lots of 4 wheel freight carriages.
They had one sleeper which they assigned to me and wife. It was a 4 berth cabin and 2 secret police took the other berths and stared at us all night.
They had no ballast machines in Myanmah at that time and all ballast was made by prisoners with sledge hammers, so they were always short , and the tracks were in terrible condition, so the train usually travelled at about 20MPH.
More on this later, but the country was so poor that people used to steal the grease from the wheel boxes of the carriages, and there were no signals outside Yangon as all the copper wire was stolen. The carriages also had old style couplings with just a big pin through double flanges on each carriage.
On our trip North a Samosa seller had died as he ran along the top of the train as he missed seeing but not hitting a low bridge. They were a sight to see as they jumped off the accelerating train down the embankment holding a Samosa tray aloft while running through all the washing on the embankment.
We got to Mandalay in the regulation 12 hours and I did my visits and we got the train back to Yangon 2 days later.
About half way there the train started to go slower and slower and we pulled into a siding. It turned out the bearing boxes of one carriage were dry and the axle seized, so the rail staff had to disengage the carriage.
They pounded away for several hours with a sledge before the coupling parted.
So away we went again. We arrived in the station near Pagan at about 4 oclock in the morning and the station was jumping with samosa sellers and tea vendors on the platform.
Over the PA was playing loudly " I feel a Bad Moon arising" from American Werewolf in London at about 105Db.
Whenever I hear that song I think of the oddest train journey I have ever had.
Regards Philip A
