The Thailand railways were established in 1890 by king Rahma V as royal railways. In 1951 it was restructured to the current public authority based on the Thailand National Railways Act. It is just 100 years old since 1896 when the first line between Bangkok and Ayutthaya became operative.
The northern line between Bangkok and Chiang Mai, which is the subject of the research this time, was completed in 1926 or 30 years after the first line was completed. Initially it was built using the standard gauge but later converted to the meter gauge taking into account through services between neighboring countries.
All the railways in this country are owned by State Railway of Thailand (SRT) and none is privatized. All the lines starts from Bangkok in a radial manner and the major lines are; the northern line to Chiang Mai, the northeastern lines to Nong Khai and Ubon Rachathani, the eastern line to Aranya Prathet and the southern line to the border to Malaysia. (See figure 2.5 -1.) Counting in some of the branch lines, the total service distance is 3,870 km, most of which is of single track. Only 90 km (2.3 %) from Bangkok northward is of double track.
The gauge is of 1 meter same as that of the neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Cambodia.
It is not electrical at all and all the lines are served by diesel locomotives or diesel powered trains made by the U.S., European and Japanese makers.
The passenger transportation capacity in 1994 was 87,336 thousand passengers (14,496 million passengers-km) which has remained rather flat in recent years. The freight handled in the same year was 7,580 thousand tons (3,072 million tons-km). This also remained unchanged recently. (See Tables 3.1 -3 and 3.1 -5.)
The shares of various transportation means between Bangkok and Chiang Mai are; railways 13 %, automobiles 56 % and airlines 31 %. Similarly, between Bangkok and Phitsanulok; railways 7 %, automobiles 92 % and airlines 1 %. While the
