History The  Inventor of the Hill Railway Lim Cheng Ean on a  Forgotten Man

A Scottish Engineer THERE HAS NOT BEEN AN ACCIDENT since [the Hill Railway]  started running in 1924. Its vital statistics are: (1)  The lower section is 1,100 feet high and the travelling time is 11 minutes. (2)  The upper section is another 1,100 feet high covered in another 11 minutes. (3)  The cable is made in England and consists of about 90 strands. ... it was the work of a Scottish engineer attached to the Federated Malay States Railway, and was built from 1921 to 1923 with the funds of the Railway. The FMSR sent him to Hong Kong and Switzerland to study the systems of such railway and to decide which should be the model for Penang. He told me that the Hong Kong style didn't appeal to him, for our hill is more steep and undulating and so it was impossible to lay the cable all  the  way  on  the  surface  of  the hill. There  had to be viaducts to carry the permanent way over the dips and recesses in the undulating surface of the hill.  Then he went to Berne in Switzerland and there he saw and studied the system in vogue there and decided that it should be followed, but that our railway should be in two sections, and thus split the work of pulling up one train at the end of the rope and letting down the train at the other end.  By thus splitting it into two sections, the work of one engine is thus shared by two engines, one at the top of each section. That engineer was really a genius to discover and decide on the two tracks of equal length and to lay the permanent way all by himself, working without ostentation or fuss or even public recognition.

No More Walking Up the Hill At that time three thousand  dollars a month was what the monthly expenses of working this railway came to.  This was what he told the writer and he found he could not make ends meet. People were afraid to travel on it for pleasure, but some people living on the hill like the writer went up and down it like a pioneer, being so glad not to have to walk up and down the hill any more. And now in 1971, this railway is so popular an attraction to people all over Western Malaysia and Eastern Malaysia that on one single day during any school holidays the receipts exceed $3,000/-. The FMSR lost touch with the railway when it became self-supporting and was taken over by the government. I wondered whether the Hill Railway accounted to the FMSR its profits. This great engineer and father of our hill railway was A. R. Johnson. He should have been knighted  for  this  great engineering achievement, but alas  like all geniuses, he lacked the acute appreciation of protocol or to use another expression, the art of flattery, especially of one's superiors in the complicated machinery of government. When told that his chief, Anthony, the General Manager of the Federated Malay States Railways had come all the way from Kuala Lumpur to be the first official to travel on the lower section of the hill railway just completed, he told his informer, who telephoned from the bottom end of that section, that he was busily engaged on some important work in connection with the upper section and suggested without appreciating that this was a terrible faux pas that the great chieftain should come up by himself and that he would receive him at the other end.

Banished to Bukit Mertajam The result was catastrophic. The chief was offended beyond measure and to show how deeply he was hurt, he there and then returned to Kuala Lumpur in a most awful temper. Why didn't poor Johnson think of coming down by the new railway to meet the chief and put aside the work he was then being engaged on?  Why did he place that work above his boss? Perhaps the chief should have written beforehand to say he was  coming.  Perhaps the chief wanted to give him a pleasant surprise and a warm handshake, which leads me to the great Chinese philosopher, Lao-tze,  giving up government service just because he disliked paying compliments to his superiors even when they were in the wrong.  After the completion of the top section, the father of our now world-famous hill railway was sent to be just an engineer of the Federated Malay States Railway at Bukit Mertajam, a little town on the mainland about 20 miles or so from Penang, and thereafter to disappear into utter oblivion, unsung, unhonoured and even unmentioned. Johnson arranged with the Municipal Electrical Engineer, one WIlliam, I think, to help look after the Railway and for the purpose he gave the latter a house near the top station to live in  so that he could be close to the Railway. Ever since then  the Municipal Electrical Engineer became the Penang Hill Railway manager and the house became known as the Manager's Bungalow. About a dozen years before Johnson discovered the site and built the railway, one O. V. Thomas, the then municipal engineer, built a hill railway on a site not far from that of the present railway.  The European residents of Penang put up the necessary capital. They liked the hill, being Europeans from a cooler climate and disliked being carried up the hill in chairs, the shafts of which rested on one Indian coolie's shoulders in front and on those of another Indian coolie behind. On the opening day in the presence of officials and dignitaries assembled at the bottom station of this funicular with one train poised on the top and another at the bottom, the cable connecting them was stretched out taut, holding them in position.  Then a whistle blew and the engines were set in motion, and the noise they made was almost earsplitting, but neither train moved.  Instead, the engines were pulled out of their concrete emplacements and that was the sorry end of the first venture at constructing a Penang hill  railway. #

_______________________ From notes made in 1968 and 1971 by Lim Cheng Ean (1890 - 1980). The 1968 note was made at the request of one Zainudin.

The Penang Story is a project organised by the Penang Heritage Trust in collaboration with Star Publications with the aim of assisting Penang and Malacca's joint listing in the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations's World Heritage list. The project is sponsored by the Japan Foundation, ABN-AMRO Bank and the Penang Government with the City Bayview as the official hotel.  The Penang Story tells of the peoples of  Penang and can be found atwww.penangstory.net

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____________________ The Penang File Issue 21