have the time, money and inclination, you can travel almost 11,000 miles from London to Singapore exclusively by train—except in Cambodia. It wasn’t always so. In the 1920s, the French started work on a railroad that would eventually run 400 miles across Cambodia in two major sections: the first from the Thai border, via Battambang, to Phnom Penh; the second from Phnom Penh to the coastal city of Sihanoukville to the south. The rail was a single line of meter-wide track, but it did the job, and people used it.

The years after French colonial rule, which ended in 1953, were characterized by instability and then civil war. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge regime evacuated Phnom Penh, reducing the city’s population from more than two million people to 10,000The “norry station” was little more than a few teak and bamboo homes at the dusty confluence of a dirt road and a set of old rails. When Rithea and I arrived, there were chickens, dogs and children scampering about and two cops lounging in the shade, chatting with the locals. Bamboo platforms, disembodied engines and old tank wheels welded in pairs to heavy axles were stacked near the tracks.

A man sitting on the rails had a prosthetic left leg, a few gold teeth and a disarming smile. He gave his name as Sean Seurm and his age as 66. He said he was a norry driver but complained that the local travelers used his services less often these days, having been replaced by foreign tourists looking for