Berglijntje Keude Breue–Seulimeum — the berglijntje (mountain line) built in the years 1904–1908 from Keude Breue over the hills to Seulimeum — was the engineering project that connected the second tramway of the Atjeh Dependencies with the old tramway of Great Atjeh, thereby forming the integrated Atjeh-tramway network as a single operational whole. In the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the completion of the berglijntje is identified as the moment at which “the military administration had created a powerful instrument for achieving the complete pacification of Atjeh.”
Account from De Buitenbezittingen (1917) — Berglijntje Keude Breue–Seulimeum
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account of the Atjeh-tramway explicitly frames the berglijntje as the engineering keystone of the integrated Atjeh-tram network. The Bureau’s narrative runs as follows: the second tramway in the Dependencies — built from 1899 onward from Sigli to Langsa and from Sigli westward over Padang Tidji to Keude Breue — was “a piece of tramway in the Dependencies, somewhat hanging in the air” (wel wat in de lucht hangende, stuk trambaan in de Onderhoorigheden), that is, a line without direct connection to the Great Atjeh network. The berglijntje of 1904–1908 supplied this missing connection:
“Dit, wel wat in de lucht hangende, stuk trambaan in de Onderhoorigheden werd in de jaren 1904–1908 door een berglijntje van Keude Breue over de heuvels naar Seulimeum met de oude trambaan in Groot-Atjeh verbonden, waardoor het militaire bewind een machtig middel had geschapen om te geraken tot de volledige pacificatie der doorsneden streken.”
The Bureau’s account also includes an illustrative plate of the berglijn section of the Atjeh-tram near the Aloer-Pantja viaduct — together with an illustrative plate of the bridge over the Lam Temot river — identifying these as the two principal engineering works of the entire Atjeh-tram network. The berglijntje is thus both the strategic and the engineering keystone of the Atjeh-tramway in the Bureau’s account.
Significance
The berglijntje of 1904–1908 is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the engineering keystone of the integrated Atjeh-tramway network and the strategic instrument of the pacification of Atjeh. Its completion in 1908 closed the geographic gap between the Great Atjeh and Dependencies halves of the Atjeh railway system, and gave the military administration the means to complete the pacification of the intersected regions.
See Also
- Atjeh-tram
- Keude Breue
- Seulimeum
- Aloer-Pantja-viaduct
- Lam Temot-rivier
- Groot-Atjeh
- Atjeh’s Onderhoorigheden
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Aceh War
- 1899
- 1904
- 1908
Sources
De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), p. 69 (section “De Atjeh-tram”), illustrative plates between pp. 68–69.