Webmaster's Note: Please note the Chinese in this article is encoded in Big-5, traditional Chinese characters. Another article written by Peter (on Woosung Road, China's first railway) can be found here. He is also the author of Woosung Road.

The detailed planning of the British section started in 1905 and construction proper began in 1906 under the direction of Graves William Eves, Chief Resident Engineer. The route, which had earlier been surveyed by J.C. Bruce and F.W.W. Valpy in 1905 was modified by Eves, who decided the line should run further inland between miles 6 and 16½ . Progress was slow because of the difficult engineering problems faced by the construction crews, not least of which was the excavation of the 3,379 foot-long Beacon Hill Tunnel which was eventually completed in May 1909. There were also many cuttings, bridges, embankments and shorter tunnels that needed building. There was considerable controversy about the location of the Kowloon terminus, and the proposed site was changed several times, embarrassing the Hong Kong administration because it had acquired land for the terminus only later to find the site  not required. Eventually Tsim Sha Tsui, between the Star Ferry Pier and Holt’s Wharf, was decided upon.  Initially a temporary station was constructed adjacent to the Post Office on Salisbury Road and this served as the terminus from the opening day until the completion of the permanent station some years later.

Chinese  Section:

The first survey for this line had been conducted in 1899 for the British and Chinese Corporation ( B.& C. Corp.) by P. T. Somerville Large, who actually surveyed a route for the entire Canton-Kowloon line although the British section was subsequently re-surveyed. On 7th March 1907 the B.& C. Corp. signed a loan agreement with the Wai Wu Pu ( 外務部 ) (Chinese Foreign Office) for the construction of the Chinese section and £1,500,000 was raised in London by means of  December 1907 5% Canton-Kowloon Railway Bonds.

In May 1907, British Engineer Frank Grove  M. Inst. C.E. was appointed Engineer-in-Chief under a Chinese Managing Director in accordance with the terms of the agreement. A head office was established in Canton and survey operations commenced in August. The route eventually followed was a length of 89.04 miles to the British border, making a total length of 111 miles to Kowloon when including the British section. The line mainly crossed alluvial plain and engineers did not face the tunnelling problems encountered in the British section. The main difficulties were the several river crossings which required steel bridges. Sufficient land was purchased along most of the route for a double track although the line opened and remained single-tracked until some eighty years later. The responsibility for purchasing this land rested with the Chinese managing director and his staff and tremendous obstacles and interference arose from peasant land-owners who objected to the disturbance of graves and feng shui. In some cases, to the disgust of the engineers, deviation from a good alignment was insisted upon to appease the wrath of villagers. The steelwork for the river bridges was fabricated in England and the building of the bridges was largely delegated by Grove to his assistant, District Engineer Basil T.B. Boothby.

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