ARANYAPRATHET, Thailand, 23 April 2019: Thailand donated a diesel train to Cambodia at a ceremony yesterday to officially mark the opening of the rail line between Phnom Penh and Bangkok.

According to a report in Khmer Times on Monday, the train arrived at Poipet train station following a ceremony at Stung Bot-Ban Nong Ing Friendship Bridge.

The diesel four-car train was manufactured by Japan’s Hitachi Corporation.

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Thai counterpart, Prayut Chan-o-cha, jointly opened the rail bridge to mark the connection of the cross-border railway.

They boarded the train for the short 1.3 km journey from Thailand’s border town of Aranyaprathet to Poipet in Cambodia, according to the newspaper.

The opening of the line ends decades of work and negotiations to re-establish a line that was once popular with tourists back in the 1960s.

Cambodia calls the route the “northern rail line”, which links Phnom Penh and Poipet at the border with Thailand, a distance of 386 kilometres.

Technically, trains can now travel between the two capital cities, but it will still take some time to get a through service up and running and smooth out the immigration and customs procedures at the border.

There is already a daily train service from Bangkok (departs 0550) that terminates at Aranyaprathet (1135), but ultimately travellers will be able to connect directly with the Cambodian train that will depart from Poipet to Phnom Penh. The distance between the two stations is just 6.9 km and the missing section of rail track that opened Monday at the actual border spans 1.3 km.

Khmer Time said that once the “railway systems are connected, passengers and goods will be able to travel from one country to the other by train…boosting bilateral trade with Thailand at estimated at USD15 million by 2020.”

(Source: Khmer Times)