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Railways of Old Ceylon
The line from Colombo to Badulla was an act of empire, an act of engineering, and one of the most beautiful train rides on earth.
The Ceylon Government Railway opened the Colombo–Kandy line in 1867 to bring coffee out of the hills. By 1924 it had reached Badulla, climbing nearly two thousand metres along the way. The schedule has changed since then. Almost nothing else has.
The trains still run on the same gauge, on the same alignment, past the same Nine Arch Bridge at Demodara, through the same tunnels cut by the same hand drills in the 1890s. A second-class reserved ticket between Nanu Oya and Ella is, on a good day, the best four hours of train travel in Asia.
