Yunnan–Burma Railway
The Yunnan–Burma railway (alternatively: Burma–Yunnan railway) was a failed British project to connect far southwest China's Yunnan province with the recently established rail network in British-ruled Burma.
The British project was working against the background of the successful French Yunnan–Vietnam railway that had been established on the nearby Hanoi to Kunming route from 1904–1910, some 30 years earlier. To secure the rights to construction, Britain referred to Article IV of the Anglo-French Siam Convention for 'mutual privileges'.
Maria Bugrova's article The British expeditions to China in XIX century discusses the question of a railway to Yunnan from Burma.
There are references in the 1898 British Hansard regarding possible construction of the line.
Archibald John Little's 1905 book The Far East mentioned the proposed route on page 124:
In 1911, Leo Borgholz, the US Consul General in Canton, published a trade report entitled 'Yunnan Trade Districts and Routes', in which he mentions that the British appeared to have shelved the project for lack of financial viability.
In 1938, Edward Michael Law-Yone travelled to Yunnan from his native Burma to see the proposed route.
By 1938 construction had begun. In 1941 25 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) meter gauge 2-8-8-2 mallet-type articulated engines were ordered from the American ALCO company, and American promised to supply steel for the construction effort.
In 1939 it was proposed to construct the western section of the Yunnan–Burma railway using a gauge of 15 1⁄4 in (387 mm), since such minimum gauge facilitates the tightest of curves in difficult terrain.
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