Hellfire Pass, Thailand

Hellfire Pass - darkometer rating : 6 - Hellfire Pass itself is a cutting on the former infamous Death Railway in western Thailand . Today there's an excellent museum here about (primarily) the Australian POW s forced by their Japanese captors to work on the construction of this difficult stretch of railway line, working them to death in many cases. Beyond Hellfire Pass a hiking trail follows circa 4 miles (6 km) of the former railway line (the railway tracks have long since been removed), cleared of the worst undergrowth, which passes more cuttings and sites of former bridge constructions. A highlight of the Death Railway dark tourism trail. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: see also under the separate Death Railway entry for general background info. The construction of the Japanese "Thailand-Burma Railway" that became known to the world after WWII as the Death Railway had been comparatively unproblematic up to Kanchanaburi (with its famous Bridge over the River Kwai ), but going north-west from here, the terrain got considerably more demanding as it went along steep river valleys and into the hills. This required the building of numerous trestle bridges and viaducts. The one at Wang Pho is still crossed when riding the train today – see under Death Railway . Also required were several 'cuttings' – i.e. narrow gorges hewn out of the rock (instead of tunnels) for the train line to pass through, rather than around hills. The POW s and other forced labourers often had to do this by hand, with nothing more sophisticated than pick axes (in a few other cases there were compressor powered drills and dynamite, but mostly it was raw, rough manual labour).