Qualla: Sabah State Railway

Sabah State Railway: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The train takes four hours to cover 134 kilometres. It is not fast, it is not air-conditioned, and on rainy days mudslides can shut it down entirely. But the Sabah State Railway is something no other railway in the world can claim: it is the only rail system operating on the island of Borneo. From Tanjung Aru, near Kota Kinabalu on the west coast, the single track winds through coastal plains and plunges into the interior mountains to reach the small town of Tenom, following a route that was laid more than a century ago to haul tobacco out of the jungle.

Read more: Sabah State Railway on Qualla

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sabah State Railway: Tobacco, Rails, and a Murut Engineer

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. Johnstone; A.J. West (Officers of the Company), Public domain. The railway owes its existence to the tobacco boom of the 1880s. Plantations in North Borneo's interior were producing export-quality leaf, but getting it to the coast was punishingly difficult without roads. In 1894, William Clark Cowie's appointment to the North Borneo Chartere...

Read more: Sabah State Railway on Qualla

Image: Dr. Johnstone; A.J. West (Officers of the Company) | Public domain

Sabah State Railway: Destruction and Diminishment

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. World War II left the railway almost entirely destroyed. In the desperate postwar years, motive power on the reconstructed line came from converted jeeps hauling carriages along battered track. A rehabilitation program launched in 1949 brought some normalcy, but the network's gol...

Read more: Sabah State Railway on Qualla

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sabah State Railway: Threading the Padas Valley

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The journey between Beaufort and Tenom is the railway's crown jewel. The track follows the Padas River valley, passing through tunnels carved into mountainsides and over bridges spanning gorges where the river churns below. Passengers at Halogilat must change to smaller carriages...

Read more: Sabah State Railway on Qualla

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sabah State Railway: A Railway Dreaming Forward

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. Despite its age, the railway has not stopped dreaming. In 2011, the Tanjung Aru to Beaufort section reopened after years of maintenance, with new concrete sleepers and trains capable of 80 kilometres per hour. The state government allocated nearly RM28 million in 2015 for new die...

Read more: Sabah State Railway on Qualla

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0