A depot on World War II’s infamous “Death Railway” has resurfaced from beneath a reservoir where the site has remained underwater for decades, prompting researchers to race to western Thailand to survey the remnants of Nithe Station. The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand recently drained the reservoir at Vajiralongkorn Dam for maintenance, revealing the station. Historians are seizing the uncommon opportunity to further study the site in Kanchanaburi province for artifacts and to verify details. But the AP reports time is limited, as the completion of the dam’s maintenance in August and Southeast Asia’s rainy season may begin refilling the reservoir.
Nithe was a major station along the 257-mile railway that connected Thailand, known at the time as Siam, with Myanmar, known then as Burma. The railway was built by about 60,000 Allied POWs mainly from Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Indonesia, known then as the Dutch East Indies, as well as hundreds of thousands of Asian laborers, whom the Japanese called römusha. More than 12,500 POWs and 75,000 laborers died during construction, which inspired the widely used nickname “The Death Railway.”
The railway was featured in the classic 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai and the 2013 movie The Railway Man. It was also the focus of the award-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which became a 2025 miniseries starring Australian actor Jacob Elordi. Read the full story for more on what researchers have found at the site.
