Private businessmen came up with the first plans, and the Governor of Suriname Cornelis Lely announced in 1902 that the government would build the railway to facilitate the exploitation of the gold fields.

[6] In the 1990s Peter Sul of Lovers Rail [nl] tried to reuse the remaining 86 km (53.5 miles) for tourist trains, but failed to do so.

[11][12] In 1905 the Arnold Jung Lokomotivfabrik in Kirchen, Germany, built two small steam locomotives with a weight of 8.5 t each, for use south of the Suriname River .

The Belgian rolling stock manufacturer Metallurgique in Marchienne-au-Pont provided 15 passenger cars with 12 windows each and fixed sun shades.

[9] For excursions, three tarpaulin-covered wagons were used, for example during the inspection of the railway and cable car by Governor Aarnoud van Heemstra in July 1923.

[15] Until 1959, one hundred bogie tank cars with eight wheels each were used for transporting jet fuel from the harbour in Paramaribo to the airport in Zanderij, a hazardous undertaking considering the sparks being ejected from the funnels of the steam locomotives.

[9][16] In 1923 the Surinamese teacher and author Richard O'Ferrall published under the pseudonym Ultimus a satirical novel about building the railway, titled Een Beschavingswerk, een sociaal- en economisch-politieke studie in romanvorm (Civilisation work: A social, economical and political study in the form of a novel).

[17] The novel sketches an ironic vision of the gigantomania of governments, the disrespectful attitude toward maroons and indigenous people, and the truculence of the Royal Family and the idiocy of the civilisation missions.