Thailand Guide
The central plains
Death Railway Museum
Opening time: Daily 9am–5pm
Price: B100, kids B50
Address: Thanon Jaokannun
Website: www.tbrconline.com
The Death Railway Museum (formerly known as the Thailand– Burma Railway Centre) is the best place to start any tour of Kanchanaburi's World War II memorials. Located across the road from the train station, next to the Don Rak Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, it was founded by the local supervisor of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Rod Beattie, specifically to provide an informed context for the thousands of people who visit the POW graves every week. An estimated 16,000 POWs and 100,000 Asian labourers died while working on the line. He spent years exploring the entire route of the Thailand– Burma Railway and the result is a comprehensive and sophisticated history of the line itself, with plenty of original artefacts, illustrations and scale models, and particularly strong sections on the planning and construction of the railway, and on the subsequent operation, destruction and decommissioning of the line. There is more of a focus on the line itself here than at the more emotive Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum, but the human stories are well documented too, notably via some extraordinary original photographs and video footage shot by Japanese engineers, as well as through unique interviews with surviving Asian labourers on the railway.