railway was first on Doumer's list, ahead of the projected Laotian, /
Cambodian and trans-Indochinese (Saigon-Hanoi) networks . After a mere four-month feasibility study, work on the Yunnan raihway commenced in 1905 and was completed in 1910 . It did not escape the attention of observers that tl1e 1french project VJ.S at ieast in part motivated by the possibility tha tthe British might be the first to "penetrate" Yunnan from the south; but eventually, to the relief of the French, their rivals abandoned their Burma-Yunnan railway project (Thompson 1937, 207).