Restoring Lok Bon Bon: Jakarta

Ever since I was a kid I have been a great lover of trains, steam trains to be precise. On my numerous travels around the world I have travelled on many and visited many railway museums. It always warms the heart to read about old locomotives being restored.

One such case is in Jakarta – the restoration of Lok Bon Bon. I was delighted to read about the loving dedication of a group of people in restoring an old locomotive:

Residents ride to rescue of capital’s oldest locomotive

Last Saturday afternoon, 29-year-old Paulus Soni Gumilang donned his weekend uniform: shorts, a loose T-shirt, a white bandanna and goggles.

Instead of heading to hang-out places like other Jakartans, the copywriter went to state train operator PT KAI’s rail yard, Balai Yasa, in South Jakarta’s Manggarai to clean up Lok Bon Bon with eight of his friends. Done with his lunch, Soni covered his head and mouth with the bandanna, put on his goggles and picked up a broom before jumping onto the rusty locomotive and sweeping off a thick layer of dust.

While, for some, trains might just be a means to get from A to B, Soni and some 80 members of the Indonesia Railway Preservation Society (IRPS) have made old trains their life-long obsession.

Bon Bon — named so because it looks like a candy box — Jakarta’s long-abandoned first electric locomotive is their top priority.

PT KAI has shown support for the effort by planning to transport the historical locomotive to West Jakarta’s Kota station and make it into a monument, the state train operator’s Jakarta office spokesman Akhmad Sujadi said.

“It was practically a garbage bin when we accidentally found it several months ago,” said Novaprima, another member of IRPS.

“It was even ready to be auctioned as scrap metal for only Rp 1,500 a kilogram.”

There is a good reason why IRPS members are so persistent in preserving the old locomotive.

Officially known as Werkspoor-Heemaf, Bon Bon is the silent witness to the paramount role of railway transportation in the development of then-Batavia. The Dutch colonial administration built a railway line in 1925 along the outer periphery of Batavia and imported electric locomotives to serve commuters.

At first, the trains served commuters from Menteng and Weltevreden to their workplaces in now Old Town Jakarta. Later on the service expanded to Bogor, which was then known as Buitenzorg.

“Trains played a very important role in the development of Jakarta and Java in general. They are more than just a functional mechanical means (of transportation),” said Indra Krishnamurti who set up a mailing list for train aficionados in 1997.

“There would not have been industrialization in Java if not for the railway services,” the 28-year-old lecturer said.

The mailing list that Indra created grew into the community initiative that IRPS is now.

With members in Semarang, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Jakarta, IRPS tries to collect and preserve all forms of available documentation of the transportation service.

However, preserving historical data and artifacts like Bon Bon is not easy.

“We have calculated that it would cost around Rp 60 million to repair Bon Bon and take it to Kota station. That excludes the cost of making it into a monument,” explained Nova.

Spokesman Sujadi said that to display the locomotive as well as set up a small historical railway library at Kota station would require of fund of up to Rp 200 million. IRPS is currently working with PT KAI and the Jakarta Cultural and Museum Agency to implement the plan.

For further information visit www.sahabatbonbon.com.

Anissa S. Febrina