![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/a-family-of-russian-tourists-pose-for-photos-as-a-train-appr-H46HQSOEOZATZKWJONJF7WPJFM.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA depot on World War II\u2019s infamous Death Railway has resurfaced from beneath a reservoir where the site has remained underwater for decades, prompting researchers to race to western Thailand to survey the remnants of Nithe Station.<\/p>\n
Thousands of Allied prisoners of war and Asian laborers toiled and died building the railway, a supply route through mainland Southeast Asia for the occupying Japanese forces.<\/p>\n
The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand recently drained the reservoir at Vajiralongkorn Dam for maintenance, revealing the station. Historians are seizing the uncommon opportunity to further study the site in Kanchanaburi province for artifacts and to verify details.<\/p>\n
But time is limited, as the completion of the dam\u2019s maintenance in August and Southeast Asia\u2019s rainy season may begin refilling the reservoir.<\/p>\n
Nithe was a major station along the 415km railway that connected Thailand, known at the time as Siam, with Myanmar, known then as Burma.<\/p>\n
The railway was built by about 60,000 Allied POWs mainly from Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Indonesia, known then as the Dutch East Indies, as well as hundreds of thousands of Asian laborers, whom the Japanese called r\u00f6musha.<\/p>\n
More than 12,500 of the POWs and 75,000 laborers died during construction, which inspired the widely used nickname The Death Railway.<\/p>\n
The railway was featured in the classic 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwa\u201d and the 2013 movie The Railway Man. It also was the focus of the award-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which became a 2025 miniseries starring Australian actor Jacob Elordi.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A family of Russian tourists pose for photos as a train approaches Thamkra Sae Station, one of the still active sections of the infamous World War II “Death Railway,” in Sai Yok, Thailand, Thursday, May 28, 2026 (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Resurfaced station presents unique chance<\/p>\n
Independent Australian researcher Martyn Fryer flew from Perth to see the site. His grandfather died as a POW working on the railway after his 1942 capture in Singapore.<\/p>\n
He stomped through muddy bogs in sweltering 38 degree heat to \u201cunderstand what those lads went through and to appreciate the country and the terrain that they endured”. <\/p>\n
Fryer, who wrote a book about his grandfather\u2019s regiment, titled From the Woodlands to the Jungle, scanned historic railway embankments with a metal detector. He found iron dog spikes, bridge staples and other war artifacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been to Nithe Station three times in the past, but the water level has always been too high to actually really appreciate the fantastic offerings that it has with the remaining infrastructure and the layout of the railway itself,\u201d Fryer said.<\/p>\n
To locate POW camps in the area, Fryer compared wartime aerial photographs of Nithe from the National Archives in London with hand-charted maps brought by Andrew Snow, a researcher with the Thailand\u2013Burma Railway Centre.<\/p>\n
Like Fryer’s grandfather, Snow’s father was captured in Singapore and forced to work on the railway.<\/p>\n
Southeast Asia’s dry season often exposes bits of the station. But the water levels hit a new low this year and drained so quickly that vegetation has not yet regrown, making Nithe easier to study, Snow explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a good opportunity for us to do some surveying,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re dealing with relatives of people that worked on the railway, it\u2019s always nice to be able to show them the areas that maybe their relative worked on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hundreds of Thai visitors have traveled to the area to see the \u201crare incident,\u201d said Kitti Laokham, a 47-year-old local resident whose posts of Nithe have racked up 32 million views on social media.<\/p>\n
Channarong Noimala saw the videos online and motorbiked 350km northwest from Bangkok to see the exposed station.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least for those who died here, no matter whether they are laborers or prisoners of war, we can remember them,\u201d Noimala said.<\/p>\n
![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/andrew-snow-a-researcher-with-the-thailand-burma-railway-cen-SBPZ6SF4SZCSBIUQBO6NTCOASU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Andrew Snow, a researcher with the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, uses historic aerial photographs from The National Archives in London to map out the layout of Nithe Station (Anton L. Delgado\/AP Photo\/Anton L. Delgado)<\/p>\n
War history preservation continues<\/p>\n
About 100km of winding mountain roads southwest of Nithe is Hellfire Pass, a brutal section of mountain where hundreds of POWs died.<\/p>\n
The Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre, funded by the Australian government, received a record-breaking 169,000 visitors last year, which also marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs time passes, places like Hellfire Pass become even more important,\u201d said Mick Clarke, an Australian Army veteran who manages the center. \u201cThey keep personal stories alive and help future generations understand the cost of war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around 22,000 Australians became POWs during the war and about 13,000 worked on the railway, with 2800 dying during construction, according to Australia\u2019s Department of Veterans\u2019 Affairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor many Australians, Hellfire Pass is deeply personal,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cIt connects families and the nation to a difficult but important chapter of wartime history.\u201d<\/p>\n
As New Zealanders were often grouped with other Commonwealth troops as POWs, the exact number of Kiwis who worked on the “Death Railway” was unknown but thought to number between a dozen and 50.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A depot on World War II\u2019s infamous Death Railway has resurfaced from beneath a reservoir where the site…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2300,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-479694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-asia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}