Muong Hoa Mountain Train

Iron wheels roll softly along the track. Yellow station light falls across the sliding rail of the door. The glass door draws aside, and on the other side lies a whole green valley.

This is the Mường Hoa Mountain Train, a short line in Lào Cai province. It links the center of Sa Pa with the station for the Fansipan cable car, and it runs straight through the Mường Hoa valley.

The train is not Fansipan itself, the peak 3,143 meters high. Nor is it the cable car up to the summit. It is only a link, carrying passengers from the mountain town of Sa Pa down into the valley, to the Fansipan cable car station.

The Nhân Dân newspaper reports that the line opened on March 31, 2018. Before that, reaching the cable car station from the center of Sa Pa meant going by road. That took longer and depended on the weather.

According to the same paper, the line runs nearly 2 kilometers, passes through two tunnels and four viaducts, and takes about four minutes. Top speed is about 10 meters per second. Two trains were built by the Swiss company Garaventa, and each carries up to 200 passengers. Clear glass surrounds the carriages.

The Lào Cai newspaper adds that the departure station stands in the Sun Plaza area, in the center of Sa Pa. The arrival station is at the cable car area. The line runs at an altitude of about 1,600 meters. As the train pulls out, the Mường Hoa valley appears through the glass. Terraced rice fields step down the mountainsides. Far off stand the wooden houses of Hmong and Giáy villages. Beyond them lies the dark green Hoàng Liên Sơn range.

The two tunnels and four viaducts are the part worth noticing. The valley is steep and cut by many streams. So the track has to be dug through the mountain in places, and carried over the gullies on bridges. That is why a line only 2 kilometers long needs such complex structures.

Both newspapers describe it as the longest and most modern mountain railway in Vietnam at the time it opened. Reputable sources do not claim it was the first in the country.

As for the architecture, Nhân Dân reports that the station was designed by the architect Bill Bensley in a classical European style. It has a high roof, arched doors, and details that recall the railways of the early 20th century. Inside the departure station at Sun Plaza, the space feels like one of the old mountain stations of Europe, even though the building is entirely new.

Four minutes, from the mountain town of Sa Pa down to the Mường Hoa valley. It is short, but long enough to show that Sa Pa holds two very different worlds. On one side is a small mountain town wrapped in mist. On the other is the foot of the Hoàng Liên range, with old forest and villages glimpsed in cloud. Iron wheels roll softly, the glass fogs with moisture, and when the train slips out of a tunnel, the terraced fields spread out ahead like a painting that no one could paint.