This website is my attempt to bring together a whole lot of disparate information about trains and railways in Vietnam. It is a collection of historical information, data, images and personal research. There are still big gaps in knowledge but they are slowly being filled. Perhaps some never will be. The upheaval that has occurred in Vietnam over the past 150 years means that sadly a lot of information has been lost and will never be recovered.

Secondly, because I do not speak or read Vietnamese except in the most rudamentary sense, I have to rely on others to translate and interpret texts written in the Vietnamese language.

This is not the easiest task in the world as Vietnamese is not my first language (the Vietnamese language lessons I've been taking are still a work in progress) so I have to rely on English language data, 'Google' Translations and help from my partner.  The Google translations are often very odd so my apologies to those who wrote in the original Vietnamese.

Surprisingly since I started in late 2009, I've collected quite a bit of data and quite a few photos, though there are many ommissions.

I am particularly greatful to the members of the Vietnam Railways Forum who knowingly or unknowingly allowed me to access their site and use material. Without the forum this site would be much poorer.

I apologize for any errors or omissions. They are all my own work. P

My name is David Gurnett.

I was born in 1950 in Sydney, Australia, when the world was still rebuilding  from WWII and the French were attempting to reassert their domination of what was then called Indochina.

I am of the right age to have had friends go to Vietnam as part of the Australian Army but never got there myself.

For the first 25 years of my working  life I was a teacher, first in High Schools in Papua New Guinea and later with the Adult Migrant English Service in NSW, Australia where I met many Vietnamese people who had left Vietnam after 1975.

Since 2000 I have  worked for the suburban passenger rail system in Sydney.

Since 2009 I have travelled to Vietnam four times.

I am married to a beautiful Vietnamese lady who very patiently puts up with my passion for Vietnamese railways and translates when I ask her to.

We currently live in Sydney, Australia.