Let’s start with this photo from likely late 1915, which has been discussed on Gwulo lately. Besides the view of the just finished KCR Terminus building, it reveals a lot about road construction techniques in Hong Kong at the beginning of the 20th century.
In Cheng Po Hung's book, Hong Kong during the Japanese Occupation, he notes that trains started running again on the KCR line in February 1942, but that by 1944 trains only ran once every two days due to fuel shortages. (I guess that train services would have stopped completely by mid-1945 - has anyone seen this confirmed?)
So when the British returned, one of their jobs was to get the trains running again. They didn't waste any time, and the first train ran on the Sep 29, 1945 ... straight into a brick wall!
