Kertapati Station: A Historic Railway Hub in South Sumatra's Palembang

RRI.CO.ID, Palembang – Kertapati Station is a railway station in Palembang, South Sumatra. Built during the Dutch colonial era, the station, operated by the state-owned railway company Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), is now one of the key railway stations in Sumatra.

Located two meters above sea level, the station stands at the confluence of the Ogan and Musi rivers. It is one of two terminal railway stations in South Sumatra, alongside Lubuklinggau Station.

Kertapati Station is the main stop for all passenger trains traveling south toward Bandar Lampung in Lampung Province and west toward Lubuklinggau. The station is also the final destination for Kertapati coal trains, where coal is loaded onto barges for transportation.

Kertapati Station was opened on November 1, 1915, by Zuid-Sumatra Staatsspoorwegen (ZSS), a division of the Dutch East Indies state railway company Staatsspoorwegen. The station opened alongside the Prabumulih-Kertapati railway line, which connected Palembang with Prabumulih to the west.

The railway line was initially part of a larger Dutch plan to connect the entire island of Sumatra by rail, linking it with existing railway networks in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra. However, the global economic crisis in the late 1920s brought the plan to a halt before the Dutch eventually left Indonesia.

The Indonesian government has long sought to revive the idea through the Trans-Sumatra Railway. If the project is realized, Kertapati Station could potentially serve train services to cities north of Palembang.

The station has 14 tracks, making it one of the railway stations with the largest number of tracks nationwide. The tracks are divided between coal and passenger services.

Although Palembang is also served by the South Sumatra Light Rail Transit (LRT), also operated by KAI, Kertapati Station is not directly connected to the system. Passengers arriving at the station need to use another mode of transportation to reach Polresta Station, the nearest LRT station.