GEORGE TOWN: A rare segment of the pre-war trolley track built here in 1895 was uncovered during recent construction works outside Fort Cornwallis.
The track, measuring about 7m in length, was discovered on June 26 during kerb and sidewalk upgrades along Jalan Tun Syed Sheh Barakbah, revealing a stretch of narrow-gauge steel rails buried beneath the road surface near the fort’s northwest bastion.
Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow, during a visit to the site, said the tracks had been built by the British before World War II and it is believed that it was used by the Japanese during their occupation.
"This is an extraordinary find, something we couldn’t have expected when the project began," he said.
Chow said officials from the National Heritage Department, the state government, Penang Island City Council (MBPP), and the George Town Conservation and Development Corporation (GTCDC) conducted an official site visit on Wednesday (July 9) morning to assess the find.
He said following an in-situ evaluation, the Heritage Department has endorsed plans to conserve and present the railway segment as an open-air public exhibit, integrating it into the broader enhancement of the North Seafront area.
This is not the first time traces of the historic light railway have surfaced.
A similar segment was discovered inside Fort Cornwallis between 2017 and 2018, leading historians to reconstruct the likely route of a former military supply loop.
Archival records and pre-1945 maps indicate that the railway once connected the Esplanade's military depots with Penang Port’s eastern shoreline.
