History of rail transport in Myanmar History of rail transport in Myanmar Rail transport in Myanmar (then Burma) began in 1877. Three private rail companies were nationalised nineteen years later. During the Japanese occupation of Burma, Allied prisoners of war were forced to build the Burma Railway. Myanmar Railways has expanded its network somewhat since 1988. Rail transport was introduced in Burma in May 1877 (when Lower Burma was a colony of the United Kingdom and part of British India) with the opening of the Rangoon-to-Prome line by the Irrawaddy Valley State Railway. The line, following the Irrawaddy River, was built over a three-year period with
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