Khun Tan railway station
 | This article has an unclear citation style. (August 2014) |
Khun Tan Railway Station สถานีรถไฟขุนตาน | |||||||||||
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| General information | |||||||||||
| Location | Tha Pladuk Subdistrict, Mae Tha District, Lamphun | ||||||||||
| Operated by | State Railway of Thailand | ||||||||||
| Line(s) | Northern Line | ||||||||||
| Platforms | 3 | ||||||||||
| Tracks | 3 | ||||||||||
| Other information | |||||||||||
| Station code | ขน. | ||||||||||
| Services | |||||||||||
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Khun Tan Railway Station is a railway station on the Northern Line locatd in Lamphun Province, Thailand. It is operated by the State Railway of Thailand, and is 683.14 kilometres from Bangkok Railway Station. Khun Tan Railway Station is in the Tha Pladuk Subdistrict, Mae Tha District.
Khun Tan Railway Station is the highest railway station in Thailand, at 578 metres above sea level. Around the railway station is the Doi Khuntan National Park, the reason the station exists, which has bungalows run by the State Railway of Thailand, for visitors' use as well.
Khun Tan tunnel
Two hundred metres from Khun Tan Railway Station, is the Khun Tan Tunnel. It is the longest railway tunnel in Thailand, at 1352.10 metres in length. Construction took 11 years at a cost of 1.3 million baht. It was finished in 1918.
History
The railway route Bangkok–Chiang Mai had been designed to avoid the Khun Tan Mountains, a barrier between Lampang and Lamphun. The tunnel was built ease trade barriers between the northern and central provinces. Surveys for the tunnel route were started in 1905. Construction began in 1907. First, base pins were set up at a level behind the mountain aligned with the tunnel route so that the tunnel could be blasted to the width needed. Then air compressors were used to drill through the mountain. If these air compressors broke down, then metal chisels were hammered into the rock, explosives inserted and then the rock was blasted to make way for track-laying. The tunnel was finished in 1918 and remains in daily use today.
Train services
- Nakhon Phing Express 1/2 Bangkok-Chiang Mai-Bangkok
- Super Express 13/14 Bangkok-Chiang Mai-Bangkok
- Express 51/52 Bangkok-Chiang Mai-Bangkok
- Rapid 109 Bangkok-Chiang Mai
- Rapid 102 Chiang Mai-Bangkok
- Local 407/408 Nakhon Sawan-Chiang Mai-Nakhon Sawan