Thailand-Burma Railway Centre

If you see only one museum in Kanchanaburi, make it this one. The Thailand-Burma Railway Centre opened in 2003 beside the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery and sets out, calmly and in detail, how the Death Railway came to be built, who built it, and how so many of them died.

The centre was founded by Rod Beattie, an Australian who spent years tracing the abandoned route of the railway on foot and researching the men who worked on it. His surveys of the overgrown railbed in the late 1990s recovered tools and other relics, some of which are now on display. The centre is privately run and doubles as a research centre that helps relatives look into where a prisoner worked, fell ill or was buried. It occupies the site of the wartime Japanese army headquarters in the town.

The galleries follow the story in order. They start with Japan’s advance through South-East Asia and the transport of captured Allied troops, then move on to the planning, engineering and logistics of the line, the geography it crossed, living conditions in the camps, the deaths, and how the railway ended. Maps, models, photographs and recovered objects sit alongside personal accounts by former prisoners.

Allow at least an hour and a half. Then cross to the cemetery next door: the graves mean more once you know the stories behind them.

The centre is on Jaokannun Road, right beside the war cemetery on Saeng Chuto Road, and within walking distance of Kanchanaburi railway station and the riverside guesthouses.