Tandjoeng Slamat (modern Tanjung Slamat) was a town on the Deli-tramway network in the East Coast of Sumatra residency that, in the 1913 debates over the extension of the Atjeh-tramway, was proposed as the direct junction between the Atjeh-tram (extended via Besitang) and the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij’s Deli-tram network. The direct Besitang–Tandjoeng Slamat connection was, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the most ambitious of the proposed Atjeh-tram extensions — and the one most vigorously contested by the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij and the Pangkalan Brandan commercial establishment.
Account from De Buitenbezittingen (1917) — Tandjoeng Slamat
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account of the proposed Atjeh-tramway extensions presents Tandjoeng Slamat as the projected direct junction with the Deli-tramway: “a plan for further extension of the Atjeh-tram network, which was vigorously defended by various authorities, was the line via Besitang directly to Tandjoeng Slamat on the Deli-tramway network, by which the new concession-terrains in the lower Langkatsche (O. K. Sumatra) would obtain a shorter and less expensive connection with the Aroebai, and an afvoerlijn [export line] would arise that could compete with the Deli-net.”
The Bureau notes that this direct Besitang–Tandjoeng Slamat connection was deferred — partly because the lower Langkat concession-terrains proved less suitable for European cultivation than expected, and partly because of “the vigorous resistance of the Pangkalan Brandan trade and of the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij” to the project. In place of the direct connection, a connection from Pangkalan Brandan to the Atjeh-tram was substituted — a substitution that, the Bureau notes, left open the question of the eventual direct Besitang–Tandjoeng Slamat junction: “against [the Pangkalan Brandan connection] it is objected that thereby the direct connection Besitang–Tandjoeng Slamat would be postponed to a still more distant future, which connection yet — in the opinion of many — will in later times prove necessary.”
Significance
Tandjoeng Slamat is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the projected direct junction of the Atjeh-tramway with the Deli-tramway — the place at which, in the most ambitious version of the 1913 extension plans, the two Sumatran tram networks would have been joined. The deferral of the Besitang–Tandjoeng Slamat connection marks a strategic defeat for the project to integrate the Atjeh and Dependencies residency with the East Coast of Sumatra residency into a single transport network.
See Also
- Atjeh-tram
- Deli-tram
- Deli-Spoorweg-Maatschappij
- Besitang
- Aroe-baai-plannen
- Aroebai
- Pangkalan Brandan
- Pangkalan Soesoe
- Telok Taboeban
- Langkat
- Oostkust van Sumatra
- Atjeh’s Onderhoorigheden
- 1913
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), pp. 70–72 (section “De Atjeh-tram”).