Bangkok Hua Lamphong Railway Station (Street Photography POV) #9

Bangkok railway station, unofficially called Hua Lamphong station, is Bangkok's central station. State Railway of Thailand operates it in the city's Pathum Wan district (SRT).

The station is called Sathani Rotfai Krung Thep by the State Railway of Thailand. Locals, tourist guides, and the press call it Hua Lamphong. In rural Thailand, Krungthep Station is more common than Hua Lamphong. All State Railway of Thailand documents (train tickets, timetables, tour pamphlets) refer to the station as Krungthep in Thai.

Hua Lamphong was a canal and road (now Rama IV Road) near this station. Some say the name Hua Lamphong originated from the green plains surrounding the area that were used to graze the Muslim community's cattle. When the people saw the cattle running vigorously in the plains, they named it Thung Wua Lamphong ('swaggering bulls plains'), eventually becoming Hua Lamphong. Others believed the name came from a local toxic plant called Lamphong (Datura metel).

Before the Royal Siamese Railway Department was founded, Hua Lamphong was a private Paknam Railway Line station (now the State Railway of Thailand). Hua Lamphong was opposite Bangkok's current station. The Paknam Railway Line opened in 1893 and closed in 1960. Rama IV Road borders the demolished Hua Lamphong station. It now houses Bangkok's Hua Lamphong MRT station.

The station opened on June 25, 1916, after construction began in 1910 under King Chulalongkorn and ended under King Vajiravudh. The national railway's maintenance center moved to Makkasan in June 1910. A nearby pillar commemorates the 1897 opening of the Thai railway network.

The station was built in Italian Neo-Renaissance style, with decorated wooden roofs and stained glass windows, using the Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof as a model. Turin-born Mario Tamagno designed the building's front, along with fellow Italian Annibale Rigotti (1870–1968). They designed Bang Khun Phrom Palace (1906), Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall in the Royal Plaza (1907–1915), and Suan Kularb Residential Hall and Throne Hall in Dusit Garden.

Hua Lamphong was originally a combined goods-and-people station. The 120-rais (48-acre) site's limited expansion space made freight and passenger transport untenable over time. In 1960, goods transport moved to Phahonyothin.

The station has two entrances, 12 platforms, 22 ticket counters, two electric display boards, and one mega TV screen. Large pictures of Thai railway history are above two platform entrances. In the heyday of rail travel, a part of the station building housed a 10-room transit hotel called "Rajdhani Hotel" () between 1927 and 1969.

Hua Lamphong served 200 trains and 60,000 passengers daily before 2020. Since 2004, an underground passage connects the station to Hua Lamphong MRT Station. The Eastern and Oriental Express and International Express to Malaysia stop there.

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00:00 Introduction
00:10 POV Start
00:32 At the tracks
00:42 Thai Anthem
01:30 Trains
01:44 Passengers
02:23 Monks

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