My room on the 21st floor at the Sule Shangri-La Hotel was a 'Horizon Club' room. These rooms have access to a separate restaurant/meeting area where light refreshments are available throughout the day and generally provide an enhanced level of service often preferred by business or private travellers who may be more demanding. I slept well in the huge bed but awoke to a rather dull, drizzly morning. I took a fairly light breakfast and then worked on the computer as I had expected a friend to visit in the morning. In addition, I didn't feel particularly energetic. I don't seem to suffer from 'jet-lag', it's just that I get more tired as I've grown older.
The weather improved during the morning and by the time I was satisfied my friend wasn't coming, I was suffering guilt at being in a hotel room when I could see a bustling world outside. What really did it, I think, was the bird's eye view from my room of Yangon Central Railway Station. This busy station has fascinated me since my first visit in March 2008 (visiting the station is described in the post Round the World Five - Day 2 (Fri, 7 Mar). So I thought, nothing too strenuous, just a gentle stroll to the station to see how the Japanese re-signalling project is proceeding.
Yangon Central Station 1-Oct-2017: The tantalising view from my hotel room.
I'd had the room air conditioning set to do as little as possible (I'd turned it 'off' but there's often residual cooling, I've found). I've always believed in trying to accommodate to a high temperature outside. But, of course, public areas in these hotels are always set more frigid than I would choose. When the automatic glass doors of reception opened to let me outside, the heat was like a physical blow and I reeled for a moment. I set off towards the railway station and found that I was walking even slower than normal. Any sort of speed seemed out of the question in the searing heat. A digital thermometer on one of the buildings reported the temperature as 31 degrees Celsius - certainly warm but not extreme. I seemed to be 'wobbling' more than normal, as well. Yangon is notorious for its crumbling pavements and unbarricaded excavations but surely, I thought, it can't have deteriorated that much since my last visit? After a while, I managed to develop some sort of rhythm (albeit a rather slow one) and came to the road bridge which passes over the approach to Yangon Central Station from the west, offering good views of the station 'throat'. The road is now dual carriageway and I'm not sure that I'd previously realised that the southbound lanes (to the west) were carried on a elderly bowstring truss bridge which was, most likely, the original bridge carrying all traffic, whilst the northbound lanes, carried on reinforced concrete spans are a later addition.
Yangon Central Station 1-Oct-2017. Left: bowstring girder bridge, right: reinforced concrete bridge.
My attention was then drawn to an 8-car (I think) diesel multiple unit setting off west from platform 4.
Yangon Central Station 1-Oct-2017: Second-hand Japanese DMU leaves platform 4 heading west with the post-war 'Burmese-style' station building in the rear.
The views from the bridge also revealed that some of the old electric point machines had already been replaced by very solid-looking new Japanese equipment and there were other signs of progress - concrete foundations for signal equipment, colour light signal posts, location cases and what appeared to be termination housings.
I carried on to the station approach which, being on the north side of the station, is often regarded as having been built on the 'wrong' side since the heart of the city lies to the south. The post-war 'Burmese-style' station building is still impressive but overdue for routine maintenance.
"Yangon Central Station 1-Oct-2017: The post-war 'Burmese-style' station building is still impressive but overdue for routine maintenance".
I explored the station for about an hour, watching the station movements and taking pictures of more new point machines with a.c. induction motors and magnetic clutches. Most readers will probably be relieved that a detailed log of the train movements I watched is not included there.
Thoroughly exhausted by this admittedly modest exercise, I returned to my hotel and didn't venture out again.
Related posts on this website
This is one of a series of posts describing my 12th visit to Myanmar. The post Starting out is the first post in the series.
Clicking on the 'Next report' link displays the post describing the next events. In this way, you may read about the trip in sequence.
Next report on this trip.
Alternately, clicking on the 'All my Burma-2017(2) reports' link displays all the posts on this trip in reverse date-of-posting order.
All my Burma-2017(2) reports.
My photograph albums
Where necessary, clicking on an image above will display an 'uncropped' view or, alternately, pictures may be selected, viewed or downloaded, in various sizes, from the albums listed:-
Yangon Central Station.
Sule Shangri-La Hotel, Yangon.
[Related posts updated, 21-Oct-2017]
