CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
180 km from Tanjungampalu to Tanjungampalu, about 2 h 17 of riding. It goes by way of Batu Tabal Train Station, Tinggi Bridge and back through Batu Tabal Train Station. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Few railways in the world have a story as odd as this one. The Ombilin line ran from the coal mines of Sawahlunto in West Sumatra down to the sea at Padang, built by the Dutch in the 1890s to carry coal that colonial industry wanted for ships and engines. To get from the highlands to the coast it had to cross the steep Anai valley, and the engineers solved it with a rack section, a toothed central rail gripped by a cog on the locomotive, the Abt system, which crawls up grades that normal wheels could not hold.
Read the complete Ombilin Railway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ombilin Railway is where the day begins. Next is Batu Tabal Train Station.
High in the mountains of West Sumatra, a railway line built by the Dutch in the late nineteenth century snakes between volcanoes, lakes and rice terraces. It was laid to carry coal from the mines of Sawahlunto down to the port of Padang, and the whole system, mines, company town and railway, forms the Ombilin Coal Mining Heritage of Sawahlunto, listed by UNESCO in 2019. Batu Tabal is one of the small stations along the route, near the shores of Lake Singkarak, where the line runs right along the water's edge.
Read the complete Batu Tabal Train Station write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Batu Tabal Train Station comes up about 66 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tinggi Bridge.
Sumatra's western highlands are the home of the Minangkabau, a matrilineal people whose houses have roofs curved like buffalo horns, and the road up from the coast at Padang to the cool plateau around Bukittinggi is one of the great short climbs in Indonesia. It passes through the Anai valley, past a waterfall that falls close to the roadside, and through the little railway halt of Kayu Tanam, where the old line from Padang once began its steep ascent on its way to the Ombilin coal fields. That railway, built by the Dutch in the late nineteenth century with a rack section to climb the grade, is now part of the UNESCO-listed Ombilin Coal Mining Heritage of Sawahlunto.
Read the complete Tinggi Bridge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 90 km into the recorded legs you reach Tinggi Bridge. Next is back through Batu Tabal Train Station.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Batu Tabal Train Station write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Batu Tabal Train Station, late in the day. Next is Ombilin Railway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ombilin Railway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Ombilin Railway. That is the ride.
Ombilin Railway → Batu Tabal Train Station is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Batu Tabal Train Station → Tinggi Bridge is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tinggi Bridge → back through Batu Tabal Train Station is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Batu Tabal Train Station → Ombilin Railway is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.