Remembering the railway
when there was a railway...!
when there was a railway...!
Before the stoppage of railway services and closure of the railway tracks for operation at Tanjong Pagar, Singapore, I had an opportunity to capture some scenes way before the usual crowd converges. Perhaps I was a teeny bit too early, but nonetheless, the absence of hobbyist photographers in most of the scenes were intentional, as it did help me to focus more on the scenes that I wanted to capture...the essence of what the railway was all about.
I didn't have the luxury of time nor resources to actually board the trains, but suffice to say my experience of riding in one was over 2 decades ago. Surprisingly, not much have changed since, albeit perhaps some tinge of modernity here and there.
What really got to me was the sort of time machine dejavu feeling that I had when I entered the station...the kind that one experienced when one enters a place that one has grown up with, but would have probably missed over a significant period of time. Time just stood still for me, as I took some time off my schedule to capture the sight, sound, smell, and even taste of the station and her tracks.
Perhaps it was the nostalgia, or perhaps it was just the retrospective gimmick that an old-school railway track/station offers that exudes that sense of oddity nostalgia, but it certainly drew me into it. Not that it didn't drew the remaining crowds months later...but somehow, the station and tracks just gave me back that one burst of memory...of that time that I took my first, and probably my last train ride.
Irfan Darian
