Lam Dong, May 8 -- Perched at over 1,500 metres above sea level in Lam Dong province, Da Lat Railway Station is seen as one of the oldest and most beautiful stations in Vietnam and former Indochina. Beyond its architectural pedigree, the station now doubles as a tourist draw, pulling visitors eager to ride the Da Lat-Trai Mat tourist train through the Central Highlands. Heritage preservation in combination with tourism development

Built by the French from 1932 and completed in 1938, the station was the hub of the roughly 84-km Phan Rang-Da Lat railway. Some 16km of the line used a rack system to climb the steep Ngoan Muc Pass, averaging a 12% gradient. At that time, rack railway technology existed only in Switzerland and Vietnam, an engi...