Campaign for a green corridor
By Teo Wan Gek and Toh Yong Chuan, The Straits Times, 30 Dec 2011.
Alarm bells rang in Nature Society (Singapore) vice-president Leong Kwok Peng’s head when he read a front-page report in The Straits Times announcing the relocation of Tanjong Pagar railway station to Woodlands.
That was on May 25 last year.
Mr Leong, 55, says the Nature Society had for years hoped to preserve the nature belt along the railway tracks.
With the railway land reverting to Singapore, future developments might encroach into the pockets of nature or break up the continuous stretch of greenery.
Mr Leong got to work. He wrote to The Straits Times Forum to propose a green corridor be preserved, and ended up spearheading the Nature Society’s campaign on the matter.
Source: The Straits Times via Wildsingapore
Jurong Line: Digging Up A Bit of My Childhood
By Daphne, 22 Feb 2011.
It’s 5pm in the evening and I’m standing by the window watching the sky turn an incandescent red. It’s my favourite time of the day to simply soak in the beautiful sights of the sun as it sets over the horizon.
From a distance, I hear a whirr that gets louder and louder as it approaches – it is the cargo train that passes by behind my house twice a day, every day. There is something most therapeutic about watching the train as it whizzes by, just like on any other day.
This was about 20 years ago.
Section of Railway track the author is referring to | Photo credit: Reclaimland.sg
Sometime in the 1990s, the actual date of which I’m not very clear of, the trains stopped running. The train tracks were left abandoned, unused, forgotten by most people, save for the ones who have once seen and heard those trains chugging down the tracks. And now, in 2011, trees have grown directly on the train tracks, up to 3 metres high, obscuring most parts of the metal rails that still line the grassland. These train tracks, lie there, forever only part of a memory; my memory. Read more
