Railway spike : Hellfire Pass, Burma Thailand Railway

Steel railway spike with an oval shaped head. Shank is square in cross section.

Taken, post Second World War, from Hellfire Pass, a railway cutting 500 metres long and 25 metres deep constructed by Australian prisoners of war between Hintok and Konyu, on the Thai section of the Burma Thailand railway, Hellfire Pass was so called because work continued on it night and day. At night most of the illumination for the work came from fires lit at 6 or 7 metres along the cutting. The light, movement and noise at night was said to resemble a scene from Dante's Inferno.