The Bridge over the River Kwai stands on eleven spans, and only nine of them are original. The two angular trusses at the centre are post-war replacements, supplied by Japan as reparations after Allied bombing destroyed the middle of the crossing in 1945. Death Railway Tour From Bangkok tours converge on that seam where new steel meets old, a repair plainly visible from the walkway itself. The line the bridge carries was built between June 1942 and October 1943. At full length it ran 415 kilometres, from Ban Pong in Thailand to Thanbyuzayat in Burma, with roughly 258 kilometres on Thai soil. Surveyors had estimated five years for the work. It was completed in sixteen months. The route followed the Khwae Noi valley because the river offered the only reliable supply line through the range, and the rock was taken out by hammer, tap and bamboo scaffold rather than machinery. Around 60,000 Allied prisoners of war and more than 200,000 conscripted Asian labourers, the rōmusha, were put to the task. The cost is counted in the tens of thousands. A 77-kilometre section survives between Kanchanaburi and Nam Tok, still operated by the State Railway of Thailand. Its most photographed stretch is the Wampo Viaduct at Tham Krasae, a teak trestle bolted to a cliff face above the water. Further north lies Konyu Cutting, known as Hellfire Pass for the torchlight that lit the night shifts, its walls closing to some seven metres of bare rock. Kanchanaburi railway day tours pair the two, while River Kwai Bridge tour itineraries usually add the Thailand–Burma Railway Centre and the war cemetery opposite it, where 6,982 graves are kept in mown rows. Trains cross the bridge at walking pace, and pedestrians step aside into the refuge bays as they pass. The structure itself sits on Mae Nam Khwae Rd, Tha Ma Kham, Mueang Kanchanaburi District, Kanchanaburi 71000, Thailand, and it costs nothing to walk: entrance is 0 THB, free entry to the Bridge over the River Kwai. That absence of a turnstile shapes the character of the place. Among Thailand World War II landmarks, few are so unguarded, so open to the ordinary traffic of a Thursday afternoon. Death Railway Tour From Bangkok tickets therefore buy transport, interpretation and the long westward road, not admission. The bridge belongs to whoever chooses to walk it.