Classic route
Royal Railway Northern Line
Phnom Penh → Battambang · Cambodia
- Distance
- 273 km
- Fastest time
- 6 h 50 min
- Top speed
- 60 km/h
- Operator
- Royal Railway
- Train
- Veteran ex-Thai Railways diesel railcar
- Countries
- Cambodia
- In service since
- 1932
- Runs
- 1× daily each way
Cambodia’s 1932 French rice line, silenced by war and revived in 2018, ambles past Tonle Sap paddies to Battambang’s art-deco station.
The French opened Cambodia’s first railway to Battambang in 1932–33 to move Tonle Sap rice, and after decades of war and abandonment Royal Railway coaxed passenger trains back onto the northern line in 2018. A veteran ex-Thai railcar now trundles out of Phnom Penh’s grand 1932 terminus through an unbroken horizon of paddies and sugar palms. Battambang’s shuttered art-deco station still keeps its original clock.
Along the way
- Phnom Penh’s 1932 station hall
- Tonle Sap floodplain paddies
- Pursat river country
- Moung Ruessei village platforms
- Battambang’s art-deco terminus
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