Why Tanglin has a Halt

Yes­ter­day, some­one tweeted some­thing quite innocu­ous — about food and about how she was about to eat food — but the local­ity she tweeted about — “Tan­glin Halt” — piqued my interest.

I’ve always won­dered who Tan­glin was named for, and why there is (or was) a “Halt” in Tan­glin. It isn’t exactly a burn­ing ques­tion, so I’ve left it aside for the best part of three decades, until now.

Googling “Tan­glin Halt His­tory”, I found the NHB site, “Her­itage Trails”, which explained:

This area, bor­dered by Stir­ling Road, Queensway and the Malayan Rail­way, derived its name from Tan­glin Road and the Malayan Rail­way, which used to have a stop (thus the word ‘halt’) near the junc­tion of Tan­glin Halt Road and Tan­glin Halt Close. ‘Tan­glin’ came from “Tua Tang Leng” (Hokkien: Great East­ern Hills), a name given by the Chi­nese to the hilly area around Tan­glin Road. Tan­glin Halt was also known as ‘Tan­glin Halt Chap Lau’ (Hokkien: Ten Storeys), after the ten-storey blocks which make up the estate. Today it is called Tan­glin Halt Green with three new 40-storey blocks tow­er­ing over the orig­i­nal Chap Lau which are still standing

So now I know: The Ten-Storey Blocks on The Great East­ern Hills where The Train of the Land of the Malays (Kere­tapi Tanah Melayu) used to Halt.