Ambarawa-Bedono Special steams again
By Tjahjono Rahardjo
SEMARANG (JP): It was midday at the railway station of Ambarawa, a small town in Central Java. The engineer sounded the shrill whistle of the locomotive. Some passengers who were still on the platform, among them a number of Europeans, hurriedly boarded the train. Within minutes the steam locomotive and its complement of three dark green and cream colored teakwood carriages slowly pulled out of the station.
No, this was not a scene from the good old times, Tempo Doeloe. In fact it happened very recently. True, the Ambarawa station had existed since 1873 and that particular locomotive, the E1060, was built just after the turn of the century. But the E1060 is a newcomer to Ambarawa and only started to operate there in 1996.
By then it was already a seasoned veteran of the line connecting the Sawahlunto coal mines and Teluk Bayur harbor in West Sumatra. This line traverses the mighty Bukit Barisan range, which includes a 43-kilometer rack line, the longest in Indonesia. The only other rack line in Indonesia, which is considerably shorter, is a section of the Ambarawa-Magelang line.
The Europeans on the platform were of course not colonial Dutch civil servants or army officers but railway enthusiasts.
Each year since 1991, Rob Dickinson, a British railway enthusiast, organizes a "Java Steam" tour for a limited number of fellow enthusiasts. This year's group consisted of 15 people, nearly half of them British, three Japanese, two Germans, two Dutch and one South African.
The three-week tour covered a number of sugar mills in East, Central and West Java, to look at their steam locomotives as well as their non-operating steam engines. The tour also included visits to the Cepu teakwood-forest, a narrow-gauge railway and the Ambarawa Station, which has now become a locomotive museum.
The scene described above was the first day of the group's visit to Ambarawa on Aug. 10, 2000, which incidentally was the 133rd anniversary of the opening of Indonesia's first railroad, the 25-kilometer Semarang-Tanggung line.
On the first day, the group only went as far as Jambu, the point where the railroad starts to climb and the rack line actually begins. This was because the E1060 was not equipped for the Jambu-Bedono rack which uses a somewhat different system than the one used in West Sumatra.
On the second day, however, they went up the rack line till Bedono with two "natives" of Ambarawa, the B2502 and B2503 locomotives. These two are the only still operable locomotives of the original five specially ordered from the Imil Kessler works in Germany in 1912 to serve this line.
The two locomotives were arranged in, what seemed to me as a layperson, an unusual way, one in front and other behind the passenger carriages. Dickinson, however, explained that there was nothing unusual about this arrangement.
"In the old days they often did this kind of thing" he said.
Anyway, this meant that there was no need to switch the position of the locomotive before climbing the rack line. With one locomotive, the common practice was to have the locomotive pull the carriages till Jambu, shift it to the rear so it could push instead of pull the train up the gradient.
Besides the foreign railway enthusiasts, there were also a number of Indonesians among the passengers of the Ambarawa - Bedono Special. Some of them were Ambarawa school children. Even for them this was a special occasion.
After all, the Ambarawa-Bedono Special does not have a regular schedule and is only operated on request. But this does not mean that it would cost a fortune to charter the train. For only Rp 1.3 million (less than US$200! -- at the current exchange rate), a train with two carriages that seat about 80 people can be hired for a two hour return trip.
Then there was the man whose grandfather used to be a steam locomotive engineer. When he was a boy (now in his early forties), his grandfather would sometimes take him to the locomotive sheds. Soon he developed a fondness for steam locomotives.
While traveling to Yogyakarta from his hometown of Cirebon, he decided to make a quick visit to the Ambarawa station. Imagine his delight when he was invited to join the group to Jambu. And when he learned that there would be another trip the next day, he decided to stay overnight in Ambarawa to join that one too.
Dickinson's policy is to allow as many locals as possible to join his railway rides free. He hopes that this will promote better appreciation of Indonesia's railway and industrial heritage among Indonesians.
"Besides, it gives the expedition a more authentic atmosphere," he added.
Needless to say the railway enthusiasts greatly enjoyed the journey. They were engrossed in taking pictures of the train and did not hesitate to climb nearby hills or wad streams, just to have the best possible vantage points. But even for the not-so- fanatical railway fans these trips were no less fascinating.
Watching the timeless, peaceful Javanese landscape of paddy fields, volcanoes and running streams from the windows of a leisurely moving steam-powered train is indeed a very memorable experience, reminding one of the bygone days when life was unhurried and less complicated.