JOHOR BARU - The last train out of Tanjong Pagar tonight will be Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd's farewell to the 79-year-old railway station in Singapore.
Sultan of Johor Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar will be in the driver's seat of the symbolic train service that will depart the railway station about 11pm.
The last train service, Ekspres Senandung Malam, will depart at 10pm. From tomorrow, southbound trains will end their journey at Singapore's Woodlands Train Checkpoint near the Johor border.
KTMB Tanjong Pagar station manager Shamsul Bahri Sahri, one of the 67 Singapore-based KTMB personnel going home, said the railway line, and the Tanjong Pagar and Bukit Timah (located between Tanjong Pagar and Woodlands) stations in the republic were a repository of history.
"It would be a lie if I said that I would not be saddened by the handover of the Tanjong Pagar station on Friday," said the 43-year-old, who served in Tanjong Pagar for 15 years.
Tan, who chronicles the history of railways in Malaysia and Singapore, said his club was planning a small gathering to commemorate the occasion tonight.
The train service to Tanjong Pagar was introduced in 1932 as a trade link between vegetable and agricultural producers on the mainland and Singapore.
The 45-minute train ride from here to Singapore was a relaxing way to enter the republic.
It was an alternative to the traffic crawl on the Causeway.
Located in Keppel Road, Tanjong Pagar was chosen as the site of the railway station to realise the British's vision of creating an extensive transport network across land and sea at that time.
The last train out puts into effect a Malaysian-Singapore agreement that will see the development of KTMB land parcels in the republic by M-S Pte Ltd, a company owned by Khazanah Nasional Bhd and Singapore's Temasek Holdings.
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