Royal railway station (Phnom Penh)


Phnom Penh Royal railway station is a railway station in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It is located next to the University of Health Sciences and the National University of Management as well as the Canadian embassy. As of February 2014, the station is only used for sporadic goods transport, chiefly oil-tank trains. This station was renovated and formally reopened October 22, 2010. However, the station buildings and platforms are no longer accessible to the public, given that there are currently no passenger services.

Construction

The process of building the station was hampered by the rainy season. "A considerable advance was thus taken during the first year and, in 1931, the Company concentrated all her effort on the one hand on the Phnom Penh train station, including embankments, buildings and facilities, which are of an exceptional importance, and secondly on ballast supplies. Meanwhile, nature, so often hostile in Cambodia, became the main auxiliary against the engineers by packing embankments and consolidating them with vegetation. Good weather having returned, work actively resumed with the rehabilitation of the embankments and the levelling of the platform."
The station was built in 1932 from reinforced concrete to service the railway to Battambang.

History

On September 28-September 30, 1960, twenty-one leaders of the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party held a secret congress at the station. The meeting resulted in the party being renamed as the Workers Party of Kampuchea. In Democratic Kampuchea, this pivotal meeting would later be projected as the founding date of the party. The first important meeting of the Khmer Rouge leadership including Pol Pot was held at the railway station in April 1975, following the fall of Phnom Penh at which the decision to evacuate the cities was taken.