My working life involves visiting a fair amount of buildings across the UK.  Typically these are fairly ordinary office blocks or distribution centres but sometimes something a bit more exotic comes along.  I have just returned from the most exotic inspection that my career has yet presented – Colombo in Sri Lanka.

And obviously, if I am going to go to such a distant destination, it would be rude not to explore the country’s railways; especially as I was well aware that Sri Lanka’s railways are fabulous………….

Sri Lanka is not a small country; it has an area a touch less than Ireland’s but a population of nearly 22 million.  Colombo is the largest city on the island by a margin but the remainder of the population is rather more dispersed than most countries; which means communications around the island are of some important.  The bulk of the railways are centred on Colombo and originate from  Colombo Fort; not perhaps as exotic as many Indian sub-continent’s stations but it was definitely a very bustling place!

As befits the principal station, most of the country’s locomotives and multiple unit sets can be seen at Colombo Fort.   These have been accumulated from a variety of sources; these originate from 1968 (but have been rebuilt) from Henschel and is a diesel hydraulic.

These are much more recent, being built in 2000 by Alstom.

More short distance services were generally formed of multiple units, such as these Hyundai units from 1991.

And these class S10 from CSR in China.

My first journey was down the coast to Galle and then Matara.  Portions of the trip were absolutely next to the Indian Ocean and one of the thrills of trains on the sub-continent for us in the the safety cossetted west is that there are a rather wider number of places to take in the view…………..

The rest of the journey is a short distance in from the coast through the jungle and fields.

Galle is a terminus station and as most of the trains proceed onwards, they have to tun around and reverse their direction; in this case behind a class M10 which are relatively recent being built in 2012 by the Diesel Locomotive Works in the USA.

There are local services (although the expresses stopped at the majority of the services, so the concept is relative!), here one is being prepared by a class Y shunter from Hunslet in the UK and then in the bay behind a class M7.

The present end of the line is at Matara, but the Sri Lankan government are in the process of extending the line a further 70km to Hambantota – maybe I’ll have to come back!

And to conclude this post, here are a couple of videos from this part of the trip.  The first is of the train departing Aluthgama:

And the second one is the departure of the same train from Galle:

…………and the best bit of the journey was still to come……….