The old station is an impressive structure in a beautiful Moorish inspired style, while sited right alongside the magnificent station is the old railway headquarters that are an equally lavish expression of oriental architectural grandeur. The march of time and progress though has left the "old" station behind, the citys centre has drifted away and it has a slick new main station KL Sentral, just a mile or so away, where all manner of flashy new metro systems converge with long-distance trains and feed into bus and airport links with the integrated smoothness of an urban transport planners wildest dream. In 2001 the prestige and glory of being the home to mainline trains was taken away by the rise of KL Sentral and the old station today suffers the ignominy of being a commuter stop: anonymous, faceless trains plowing their way in monotonous conformity through the vast suburbs of this city. However its grandeur remains undiminished and despite the onslaught of ambitious planning around it, this throwback remains one of the citys most distinctive and iconic landmarks. It opened in 1910 and converged railway activities into one spot: it built on the site of a previous station and took away the traffic of two other stations in the city. Like many buildings in the city it was the work of A.C. Hubbock and it developed further his mixture of eastern and western styling, fusing influences this administration-employed architect had discovered on travels into India and Africa. The station is clustered with towers, arches and distinct appendages: stylish and eye-catching architecture that would have given long gone travelers the perfect sense of where they were. Under the vast roof the station is a cavernous space, the platforms are clean, neat, tidy and orderly, and quite high above the track - no wandering over the rails Bangkok-style here. Much of the lavish railway building, with its grand architectural styling, is unused now. After the shift to KL Sentral almost a decade ago, sections of the station have been decommissioned. Part of it has been turned into a hotel, the Heritage railway Hotel retains all the charm of the building, it is accessed through the covered access road that once brought travelers setting off on adventures into a less orderly world up to the ticket offices and waiting rooms, while next door there is the Heritage Railway Restaurant. Inside the station there is also a small exhibition of railway history which includes models of coaches and wagons, old signs, photographs from the stations heyday and railway machinery such as signals and levels. There is a display of faded photos former directors of the Federated Malay States Railway and Malayan Railway, each proudly labeled, long departed faces of men from an era when the job conferred the holder with status and prestige. The first faces are of the Western pioneers that drew up the ambitious railroad plans, before the vista changes as Malaysian nationals took over responsibility for keeping the trains on time. In front of this line up of bygone faces there is a cluster of plastic buckets catching a rain leak, symbolism that needs to further explanation into how time has passed by this station and the railway system in general. Opposite the station, on the other side of Jalan Sultan Hisamuddin is an equally dramatic structure: the former Malayan Railway Headquarters Building. A shiny metal plaque mounted on the wall outside offers a quick snapshot into its history. Designed again by A.C. Hubbock in 1913, construction began in 1914, and after a delay due to the onset of WWI, it was completed in 1917. This must be one of the most extravagant railway buildings in the world, again it is in the Moorish style of the Ottoman and Mogul eras combined with Gothic and Ancient Greek styling influences. The ground floor contains no less than 97 Gothic arches and 4 smaller arches with high and wide verandahs that helped to create a cooling effect, useful in the tropical heat; the first floor has 94 large windows in Gothic style along with 4 smaller, circular arches, while the final floor has 171 Gothic style arches as well as 4 large and 12 smaller circular arches. Five domes, of an orthodox Greek 14th Century design, top the building, and at each of the corners they are entwined into a circular stairway. The building has suffered twice in its life: firstly when it was bombed during WWII and then, in November 1968, when one of the wings was gutted by fire. An old railway signal in the small garden in the front gives the game away that this architecturally-flamboyant building was once much more than anything quite as mundane as the administrative offices of a modern commuter rail network as is depicted by a couple of ill at ease modern signs depicting the KTM company name.
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Kuala Lumpur Train Station action (28/01/10)by MickFix10,340 views
:)
circleline28 7 months ago