Da Lat Railway Station

A slow old train pulls out of Da Lat Station and heads for Trại Mát, rolling through pine forest and the edge of the city. It leaves from a station that is far from ordinary. This is Da Lat Railway Station. It is a historic site ranked at the national level, and a work of architecture shaped with care from its first drawings.

The story of the station begins with the railway from Tháp Chàm up to Da Lat. The line joins the coast of Ninh Thuận to the highlands of Lâm Đồng and runs about 84 kilometers. The French built it in the early 20th century. According to the Da Lat Gazetteer, a book about the city, work began in 1908 and finished in 1932. It is an unusual mountain railway, because it climbs steep passes on toothed rails, a rack system that very few railways in Southeast Asia have ever used.

The station itself went up between 1932 and 1938. It was never meant to be a purely technical structure. From the start, the design set out to bring in beauty and a sense of symbol. The Gazetteer records who did what. Reveron, the architect, drew the design, with ideas influenced by the new Anglo-Norman style. A second architect, Moncet, filled out the details of the plans and oversaw the building. The railway engineering was in the hands of the engineer Porte. The man who built it was a Vietnamese contractor, Võ Đình Dung.

Start with the front of the station. The red tile roof is tall, folded and angled section by section. The plan is almost symmetrical, and the walls below the window sills are of split stone. At both ends the roof curves into an arch, and that sets Da Lat's station apart from any station on the plains. Many people say the roof recalls a highland peak. That is each person's impression, though, not a statement from the designer. What is certain is that the building was made to stand out, and not only to be a place where trains stop.

By the same book, the station is 66 meters long and 11.5 meters wide, and its main hall is 11 meters high. Step inside and the hall feels tall and open. Daylight comes in through panes of colored glass at the base of the roof. The light has a classic quality, neither too bright nor too dim, solemn and yet warm.

In 2001, the Ministry of Culture and Information ranked Da Lat Station a national architectural monument. On June 21, 2024, the People's Committee of Lâm Đồng province followed. It recognized the station as a tourist site, under Decision 1061.

Then there is the train. The stretch from Da Lat to Trại Mát is 6.7 kilometers long, and it is the only part of the old mountain railway still running. The train passes through pine forest and the suburbs of Da Lat, and stops at Trại Mát, where visitors can see Linh Phước Pagoda. It is not a fast train, and not a modern one. It is slow and old-fashioned, and it rolls through lush green scenery with a gentle feeling of nostalgia.

On the platform, the view is of pine forest and the wide highland sky. No wonder the French did not build an ordinary station here. They wanted a building worthy of the scenery, set between mountain passes and mist. More than eighty years later, it is still standing, with its red roof and its arched doorways, like an invitation to board a train and begin a journey.