Tuesday, May 22 2012
Penang Hill Railway: Let's get real
Sunday, 02 August 2009 08:11

By Ric Francis.

I AGREE with Penang Heritage Trust comments as I was the engineer who helped them submit a presentation to the Minister. I was highly insulted by the report claiming my system was a clone. They have not learnt from the great mistake in 1905 that caused the first Railway to fail.

The Penang Hill railway is unique in the world and it has problems to overcome that are not in any other hill railway. Most are straight up and down. Not so this one. To claim it is simple to divert the bottom line to the top line. Now let’s get real... To shift the bottom line left 15 feet and raise it 5 feet requires a lot of engineering skills.

Let’s also remember the fragile condition of the hill plus the water coming down during the wet seasons – BEWARE OF LANDSLIDES. I have consulted engineers in Japan and US which also have hill railways but not quite of the same scale.

The Japanese and US experts say my suggestion with a few more ideas would be cheaper and more efficient to save a world heritage railway. Our suggestion would move more people at a slower speed up the hill faster. Please remember that at present the cars move slower because of the condition of the rails; with new rails under our system, the turnaround of passengers would twice as fast.

The trip, however, should be enjoyed. People should not be rocketed up the hill which could cause height sickness.

To conclude they [the Tourism Ministry] should look at the report commissioned in 1990 by the then Government, and request a copy from PHT on the engineers report who built the Hills Railway. I did most of my studies on the Penang Hill Railway based on them.

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