LETTERS:I REFER to the report about the longest railway bridge in Malaysia - ‘It is a shame if Victoria Bridge is left to crumble’ (NST, Jan 12).
I thank you for disclosing the state of disrepair that has befallen Victoria Bridge.Your call that the ‘public must take pride in heritage assets’ is apt and timely.
Some added information: Maintenance of the bridge is within the jurisdiction of the Enggor Railway Station, situated at the western end of the bridge. As the name implies, the bridge was not built using local labour with a payment of 55 cents per day after the Japanese occupied Karai.
Neither was it blown up; the Victoria Bridge was never shattered or destroyed by an explosion.
To stall the inevitable advancement of the Japanese Imperial Army, the British Army detonated the middle part of the bridge.
This was observed by a Japanese Lieutenant-Colonel onboard a single-engine aircraft through his glasses when hovering at an altitude of 305 metres above the Kledang Range.
Thus, when they reached Kuala Kangsar, the advancing Japanese knew what to expect and its engineers also knew what to do at Enggor.
While one group was busy repairing the demolished part of the bridge and securing additional sleepers between the rails to facilitate motor vehicle traffic, the other group went into the rubber smallholdings nearby and cut down the trees to build a temporary bridge across Sungai Perak running parallel and lower to the permanent bridge.
The Japanese Army’s ingenuity enabled them to cut short its time by half to bring its troops across and thus frustrated the enemy’s dead reckoning to regroup at Slim River before reaching Singapore.
DATUK SHAMSUL-BAHRAIN IBRAHIM
Kuala Lumpur
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times