By Armand Ahmad.

Businessman Andrew Hwang recalls riding the old funicular train up Penang Hill and fond memories of his father repairing the train at night. Arman Ahmad has the story.

I STILL remember when I first went up Flagstaff hill in 1970 using the funicular railway.

In those days, you rode in an old wooden carriage which was open and passengers could reach out and pluck flowers or feed monkeys.

The air was very fresh and much cooler in those days, like a very cold air-conditioned room. And you could smell the jungle everywhere.

As the train ascended and moved away from the din of the lowlands, you would begin to hear faint jungle sounds over the increasing stillness. The sound of the city would just fade away and a sense of calm envelopes everything.

There used to be plenty of "monkey cups" or pitcher plants everywhere. We used to see monkeys drinking from them. The monkeys were quite visible and would come near the railway as passengers used to throw nuts and food to them.

When it rained, water would get into the train and the whole family used to huddle together until we got to the top. I cannot remember the fare but they had first and second class tickets and it was cheap by today's standards.

There were three big stations -- Lower Station (at the foot of the hill), Middle Station and Upper Station. There were other stops -- the Jade Emperor's Pavilion temple stop, Claremont, Moniot, Viaduct Station, Lower Tunnel Station and Upper Tunnel Station.

We would board at the Lower Station, get out and change trains at the Middle Station and get off at the Upper Station. The whole trip took just under 30 minutes.

We would go up maybe two or three times a year during school holidays when I had my cousins over. We also went up when we had visitors from outstation.

Going up as a child with my cousins, I used to have great fun and I remember I had my first camera (I was about 10), a Kodak Pocket Instamatic with Flipflash, and used to take many photographs.

But I don't know where the pictures are now. When my parents moved from Penang, they were packed in a trunk where they are probably still stored.

The view from the top was splendid, more so at night. And we used to run around at the top when we were younger, only stopping to buy ice-cream. If our parents were with us, they would stop at the Tea Kiosk and have tea.

As I grew older, in my teens, I grew fond of hiking up the hill. I hiked up there countless times, using the road made for four-wheel drive vehicles. It was very beautiful up there.

There were many bungalows all the way up the hill and around the top.

There was a police station, Bellevue Hotel, Strawberry Park, and the Crag Hotel which was no longer a hotel but was the premises of the Uplands School (today the Uplands International School of Penang) which was the premier expatriate private school in those days .

I think Uplands moved out in 1977. The names and appearances of the bungalows transported the visitor to far-off Britain -- Richmond, Bel Retiro, Fairmont, Halliburton's Bungalow, Convalescent Bungalow, Christian Brothers' Bungalow, Strawberry, Browhead, Southview and Claremont.

The surroundings trails were excellent for walks with trails that stretched all around and one could actually walk all the way to Balik Pulau using those trails.

I recall hiking up the hill as a teenager using the Moon Gate trail which began at the white Moon Gate (today painted in various colours) on Waterfall Road. This circular gate was the original entrance to the well known Cheah Chen Eok's bungalow (now in ruins), a few metres up the trail. Cheah was famous in Penang as the man who donated the Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee clock tower at the roundabout near Fort Cornwallis.

One ironic thing about the hill, which is popularly known as Penang Hill is that there is actually no such thing as a hill named Penang Hill.

That is only a collective name for the hills upon which the British built their hill resort. The funicular railway which just closed recently was actually built on Flagstaff Hill (hence the present name in Malay, Bukit Bendera)

The funny thing is that the new train will go up in supposedly nine minutes.

I don't really see the point in that. Most people going up the hill are sightseeing, and when you are holidaying, you have a lot more time on your hands.

But even when they changed the cars from the open carriages to the Swiss red and white ones in 1979, people complained. It was largely because sometimes the air conditioning would break down and the Swiss carriages had fixed windows which could not be opened.

When they upgraded in 1979, one of the old cars was put on display on top of the hill, while the other two can be seen in the Penang State Museum and at Muzium Negara.

However, even before these trains (which were introduced in 1920) were used, there was actually another two carriage trains in use just at the turn of the century.

In 1985, as fate would have it, my father, Ian Hwang --- who worked in the engineering department of the Penang Public Works Department, was put in charge of the train maintenance. He would retain this responsibility until 1995.I remember how I would follow him up the hill at night to fix broken down trains.

One night, I even spent the whole night up there as he worked.

It was cold and quiet up there, and there was utter silence.

Up ahead where stars glittering in the darkness and far off in the distance, you could see the lights of the Penang Bridge reflected off the lapping waves of the Straits of Malacca.

** Reproduced with permission. This article first appeared in the March 7, 2010 issue of New Straits Times Online.

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