End of the line is nearing for Cambodia’s ‘norries’

via CAAI News Media

By Staff Reports

Published: June 5, 2010

By Mark Magnier Los Angeles Times

BATTAMBANG, Cambodia -- It rattles along at 20 mph, swaying back and forth on uneven rails, the engine so loud it makes your teeth hurt. Then, rather unceremoniously, it runs out of gas and dies.

And you find yourself stranded in the middle of Cambodia on a handmade "norry" train, feeling a bit exposed on a 25-square-foot platform made of bamboo and scrap metal attached to wheels salvaged from old tanks.

Picture one of those hand-pump rail cars depicted in old Westerns, and you're close. It's powered (when there is gasoline) by a converted outboard engine. The brakes (when it has gas and you need brakes) are a wooden board pushed against the wheels. No seats.

All this bamboo and scrap metal give the thing a makeshift appearance, and appearances don't deceive. Pretty soon, driver Path Chanthorn starts pushing the disabled norry with hands that are missing a few fingers from a run-in with a water buffalo.

Another norry approaches in the opposite direction, carrying a dozen people -- covering every inch of the platform -- who are headed to a festival. With a single track to ride on, etiquette dictates that the norry with the lighter load take itself apart so the other can pass. So Chanthorn and his assistant quickly dismantle their vehicle and let the other one pass, then put theirs back together again, all within minutes.

And you are on your way.

Now, a government plan to upgrade the country's rail system may end up forever stranding the norry, an ingenious response to the decades of war, destruction and dire poverty that have afflicted Cambodia.

As the country descended into civil war and mass murder under the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s, the country not only lost 2 million people. In Pol Pot's quest to reach "Year Zero," it also saw most of its roads destroyed, its trucks blown up, its locomotives charred.

By the early 1980s, as Cambodia started to emerge from the nightmare, people remembered the small vehicles used by rail workers in the 1960s to repair the tracks. They started building their own, and the norry was born -- the name, some say, is derived from a mispronunciation of "lorry," the British term for a truck.

The humble norry is a reminder of how much Cambodians lost, but it also speaks to their persevering spirit. All but left for dead under Pol Pot's genocidal leadership, they defied the odds to rebuild.

"It shows how ingenious people can be," says Ith Sorn, 55, who has been driving norries for three decades. "Cambodians came up with this when they had almost nothing."

The unique mode of transportation saw its heyday in the 1980s when other vehicles were scarce.

"There were bombs and mines everywhere, roads were destroyed and rail cars a shambles," says Kot Sareurn, 50, a union leader for 23 norry drivers in Battambang, a picturesque provincial capital along the tranquil Sangker River. "Norries helped a lot of people survive, get to hospitals, get food."

Initially, operators "rowed" the norries with poles, gondola-style, carrying loads of up to 40 people, eight cows or 3 tons of rice. After a few years, small gasoline engines were added.

At the peak, thousands of norries operated throughout Cambodia. Drivers charged villagers a few cents for a ride but still making a decent living with so many people and possessions jammed aboard.

These days, the few hundred remaining norries are relegated to short distances in a few provinces -- more an oddity for tourists -- as trucks, public buses and motorbikes fill the gap. They're still privately owned, but nowadays companies sometimes own several of them, splitting the profits with drivers.

Safety? Not a problem, Sorn says: "I've never had a bad accident. Only occasionally, if it's overloaded, we'll break down and some goats tumble off."

The government plans to revamp the nation's two modest state-owned rail lines -- a 230-mile stretch from Phnom Penh to the Thai border completed by the French in 1942, and a 150-mile stretch from the capital to the southwestern Sihanoukville port finished with help from China and Germany in 1969. Government officials envision turning the system over to private operators by early 2012.

This would almost certainly see the go-cart-like norries muscled aside by "real trains."

Union leader Sareurn has little nostalgia for the contraptions that have earned his keep for decades. "If the government provides compensation, we'll all stop the next day," he says.

Others aren't quite so sanguine. "I'm worried, but what can you do?" says Chanthorn, 37, who has been driving since he was 10. "The rails belong to the government. We're just borrowing them."

Recently, more foreigners have been riding his norry, Ith says, including three with big bellies recently who initially balked, thinking it too flimsy to support them.

"They worried that the bamboo would break, but bamboo is very strong," he says. "If I can carry eight cows, I can certainly carry a few fat foreigners."