Identifier: britishmalayaac00swet (find matches)
Title: British Malaya: an account of the origin and progress of British influence in Malaya; with a specially compiled map, numerous illustrations reproduced from photographs and a frontispiece in photogravure
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Swettenham, Frank Athelstane, Sir, 1850-1946
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Lane
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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e questioned whether thatrecord has ever been equalled in railway history. Boththe Selangor and the Perak railways are metre gauge, andthat system has been maintained in all subsequent railwayconstruction in the Malay States; but the weight of therails, originally 461 lb. to the yard, has been increased to60 lb., and the extensions now in hand (the Johore StateRailway, financed and constructed by the FederatedMalay States) are to have 80-lb. rails. In this earliestrailway work a very high standard of excellence wasadopted; no gradient was steeper than i in 3(X), and nocurve more severe than 15 chains radius. In subsequentwork it was found advisable to relax these conditions ; butthe fin ncial success of the Selangor line was, to a largeextent, due to their observance. The railway undertaking was not allowed to interferewith the construction of roads, and by 1885 Selangor haddriven a cart road through the jungle from its boundarywith Perak in the north to the borders of Sungei Ujong in
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EVOLUTION OF RESIDENTIAL SYSTEM 241 the south. Sclauf^or was thus the first State to completeits section of the main road which runs in an unbrokenline from Province Wellesley to the boundaries of theNegri Sambilan and Malacca; but a main trunk railwaynow traverses the same country, and the federated MalayStates have already, at their own expense, carried it foranother twenty-five miles through Province Wellesley toa terminus on the Prai River, opposite Pinang, theyare completing the southern extension, 120 miles throughJohore territory, to the capital of Johore on the JohoreStraits, and they have built and just purchased from theColony the Malacca railway, from their own main line tothe town of Malacca. In such a country as the Malay Peninsula, with theclimate of a perpetual Turkish bath, and a mining popula-tion of aliens working in newly cleared and newly turnedground, it was certain that there must be a great deal ofsickness and a high death rate. Amongst the firstGovernment build

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