Rail transport in Myanmar was added to the line to accommodate it. Apart from the Thailand - Burma Railway the country has never had any international links. However: Rail transport in Myanmar Rail transport in Myanmar involves a railway network that is run by Myanmar Railways, a state-owned railway company under the Ministry of Rail Transportation. The first railway, in the then British colony of Lower Burma, opened in 1877 between Rangoon (Yangon) and Prome (Pyay), a distance of 163 miles (262 km). Unusually for a British colonial railway, it was built to metre gauge. Subsequent development was to the same gauge, and by
History of the Jews in Myanmar nationalist Burmese government. One synagogue survives in Yangon, the capital, and in the 21st century, it attracts an increasing number of tourists. The first recorded Jew in the country was Solomon Gabirol, who served as a commander in the army of King Alaungpaya in the 18th century. But it was in the mid-19th century, during the British colonial period, that Jewish merchants from Iraq and India began establishing sizable communities in Rangoon and Mandalay. The Baghdadi Jews had emigrated from Iraq to escape persecution and being subject to pogroms; they comprised most of the immigrants. Cochin Jews and the Bene