The Vietnamese railway network has a checkered history. Today it crosses roads, zips through slums and is poorly maintained. Accidents are rife. Each year the number of people dying in railway accidents accounts for about 2% of all deaths in the country – that’s 100 times worse than in India.

Established under French Colonial rule at the turn of the twentieth century, and completed nearly forty years later in 1936, Vietnam’s Railways have been plagued by poor infrastructure over the entirety of their lifetime. Over the course of the last century, the railway, as a vital economic resource, has found itself at the heart of many international conflicts, sustaining major damage in the process.

However, when the fighting escalated during the Vietnam War in the 1950s, the Vietnamese needed fresh supplies from their communist allies in China and the Soviet Union. With China and Vietnam using different gauges, everything needed to be unloaded from Chinese trains and re-loaded on Vietnamese ones. It was time to modify the system. Vietnam converted their track to match China.