Fort Railway Station

The railways came early to colonial Ceylon - work on a line between Colombo and Gampaha began in 1864, less than forty years after the world's first commercial railway began operating in England. Spurred on by the demands of the coffee (and later, the tea) trade, the first Colombo-Kandy service began in 1867, and a complete island wide rail network was in place about fifty years later.

Fort Station, the busiest in the country, is a typical example of British Indian railway architecture, with its platforms, sidings and signal-boxes being built to designs seen allover the Indian subcontinent. In recent years, Fort Station has served as a movie set, standing in for Calcutta's famous Howrah Station in a film on the life of Mother Teresa.