Notes on Lopburi – The new train station, and where are the monkeys and overlanders?

Lopburi is the capital city of Lopburi Province in Central Thailand. Lopburi is littered with historic ruins, and the city made global headlines when it was overrun by monkeys. The city is on the Northern Line that connects Bangkok and Chiang Mai. A new train station was built outside the city in 2025, so I figured it was time for a revisit. These are my notes from my visit in December 2025. A tale of two train stations [Lopburi Railway Station] Lopburi railway station is in the middle of the city, so it’s an easy destination to visit by train. The trains run at street level, so the State Railway of Thailand decided to build another station on a new bypass line. The new station is about 8 km from the city centre, and I timed my trip to visit just after the station opened in December 2025. The bypass is a 19 km elevated railway that looks like something that would be built for a high-speed railway. This is still a metre-gauge railway with diesel-engine trains. [Lopburi 2 Railway…