Railway market back on track

Rail-ly popular: A passenger train passing through the Mae Klong Railway Market as tourists snap photos in Samut Songkhram province, around 80km southwest of Bangkok. — AFP

A train bell rouses a Thai grandmother dozing in her fruit and flower stall, sending her rushing to fold in her awning before the locomotive slowly rumbles past, so close it almost touches her wares.

Six times a day at the Mae Klong Railway Market, local customers and foreign tourists scramble into nooks and crannies while vendors calmly move their woven baskets of goods away from the tracks and close their umbrellas to make way.