The Kunming-Hekou line (468km) is the railway between Kunming and Vietnam border nearby Hekou. In 1903 the Qing dynasty and France made the railway construction treaty. Already there was the railway of a meter gauge between Hanoi and Lao Cai, off Hekou, so the train has been able to drive from Hanoi to Kunming after completion. The line — designed by the French so that they could tap Yunnan's mineral resources for their colonies in Indo-china — has been cut during World War II, restored in 1957, cut again in 1979, and reopened in 1996. Landslide put the Kunming/Hanoi out of service in 2003 and still out so far.
I stipulate all this is true and correct. In the third world, a rail line cut by natural events often dies. The Philippine line died north of Mt Pinatubo.
The Panama line is dead - the rails sunk too much. SOP. Unless someone invests in a rail line, it will not be reborn after something big cuts it. And mountains exist because slow but powerful forces make them. Volcanos, rising strata due to tectonic plates going over/under each other - these things can do what we humans would find hard. The significant fact about this line is that - late in WWII - when the rails were partly lifted - it was an efficient line of march used by the French escaping the massacre at Hanoi.
