Food cart loaded atop the flat car, a vendor pushes his way home down Bangkok’s abandoned railway

Here at WoWasis, one of our most popular posts is about Cambodia’s bamboo train, which makes use of abandoned rails and cars made from army tank wheels. As we found out this week, Bangkok’s not far behind in determining new uses for abandoned railroad tracks.

It’s been years since any train rolled down the tracks that cross Sukhumvit at the intersection of Soi 1, and what used to be known as Soi Zero. Like any other area in Bangkok, thousands of vendors operating mobile food carts (rot kaen) ply their trade, either stationary, or constantly on the move. Recently, sitting on the abandoned tracks at Soi 1, we found a home-crafted flatcar that had its wheels spaced to meet the gauge of the railroad track. And on this flatcar, at the end of a working day, a rot kaen operator placed his cart, then rolled it north toward the direction of  Klong San Saep. We’ll bet he doesn’t own the flatcar either; it’s probably rented for each trip.

Bangkok is truly a city in which one person’s trash is another’s treasure, and this even includes old railroad tracks, given a new life as a highway for food cart owners who no longer have to push their carts home at night through traffic-infested streets.