User:Dragfyre/Sandbox/List of railway stations in Vietnam

This is a list of railway stations in Vietnam. It only includes stations with timetabled services. The Vietnamese railway system is owned and primarily operated by the state-owned Vietnam Railways (Đường sắt Việt Nam), although private railway companies also offer special service to key destinations. Its principal route is the 1726 km single track North-South Railway line running between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Besides this one, the system includes lines connecting Hanoi to the People’s Republic of China, to surrounding cities such as Thái Nguyên, Hai Phong and Ha Long.

As of 2005, there were 278 stations on the Vietnamese railway network. Of these, 191 are located along the North-South Railway line, 40 along the Hanoi–Lao Cai line, 23 along the Hanoi–Dong Dang line, 18 along the Hanoi–Haiphong line, 14 along the Hanoi–Thai Nguyen line, and 12 along the Kep–Ha Long line.

History
Construction of the North-South Railway took over thirty years, with individual sections completed serially: from 1899 to 1905, the Hanoi–Vinh section was laid down, followed by the Nha Trang–Saigon section from 1905 to 1913, then the Vinh-Hue section from 1913 to 1927, and finally, the remaining Hue–Nha Trang section from 1930 to 1936, at which point the entire Hanoi–Saigon link was formally put into full operation.

Architecture
Since Vietnam's railway system was mainly built by the French during their occupation of Indochina, many of the stations were built according to the neoclassical Beaux-Arts architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In fact, Beaux-Arts training was de rigueur for architects in Indochina: an 1885 report states that the Governor of Cochinchina, seeking to hire a certain number of architects to work on public buildings, insisted that all candidates be educated at the École des Beaux-Arts. The main pavilion of Hanoi's Hang Co Station, originally built in the Beaux-Arts style, was destroyed during the Vietnam War in December 1972 as part of Operation Linebacker. With its two wings left standing, it was rebuilt in 1976, the main pavilion being replaced with a more modern concrete pavilion in the Soviet internationalist style; author William Stewart Logan described it as "a concrete block building of little architectural significance".

Da Lat Railway Station, designed in 1936 and completed in 1938 by French architects Moncet and Reveron, was designed in the western style, although it incorporates the high, pointed roofs characteristic of the communal buildings of Vietnam's Central Highlands. The three roofs, said to represent the three peaks of Dalat's iconic Lang Biang mountain, are also reminiscent of Normandy's Trouville-Deauville Station. The station's earned it recognition as a national historical monument in 2001.

In order to facilitate tourism—one of the railway's primary uses at the time—railway stations were commonly built with attached hotels.

North-South Railway
This abridged list includes all major stations with timetabled services. As of 2005, there were 278 stations on the Vietnamese railway network, of which 191 were located along the North-South Railway line.

Notes and references

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