Altabba’s technical expertise has led him to work as a consultant on documentaries about historic engineering feats, such as the construction of the ancient Rainbow Bridge in China, cathedrals in Normandy, France, and now the Thailand-Burma Railway. “It is very rare that the program is something I am specifically knowledgeable about, so I end up doing a lot of my own research,” he says. “I read everything I can get my hands on historically. Usually there is very little technical stuff because engineers are typically not interested in reviewing history and commenting on previous work. They are so bogged down with their current projects that they rarely reflect back.”

In that sense, Altabba is an atypical engineer: “One of the main reasons why I’ve been asked to do these films is that I tend to get very involved in a story. I take it on. It becomes my problem. I need to figure it out. I also don’t hold anything back, so whatever I think, whatever I feel, it comes out for the cameras. The producers like that, so they try to play to it more. They really want as much of my natural, initial reaction to seeing or experiencing things so they typically keep me sheltered and limit the amount of exposure I have of the facts and the sights until I am in the middle of it, and then ‘Boom!’, on camera, I wonder, ‘My God! What are you guys putting me into?’”

During the filming of SECRETS OF THE DEAD: “Bridge on the River Kwai,” a surprise announcement by the film’s independent producers almost led Altabba to quit the project. “They did not tell me that they were going to bring in the Japanese officers [who participated in building the railway] and that I was going to be their prime interviewer,” he recalls. When I learned about it, I considered pulling out. This story, for me, was an engineering question. I was the engineering consultant and I was going to view it from an engineering perspective. I thought I should have been told, that I should have been prepared.” And yet, Altabba stuck it out. “For a day I was very upset, but then I got over it. I thought, ‘Okay, if that’s the way you want to do it, that’s how we’ll do it,’ and I went all out. I am a little on the crazy side, so I asked them the questions that were on my mind.”

The most famous of the bridges on the “Death Railway” spanned the Khwae Noi River — the River Kwai — in Kanchanaburi, a western province of Thailand bordering Myanmar (Burma). The first of these River Kwai bridges, completed in February 1943, was fashioned entirely out of wood. It was used to transport light trains and materials across the river to other railroad construction sites. A stronger steel-and-concrete bridge was completed in April 1943. The bridge operated until February 13, 1945, when Allied bombardiers used conventional heavy bombs to blow out two of the bridge’s central spans.

The Bridge on the River Kwai may be famous, but according to Bashar Altabba, a structural engineer, it was not remarkable — and neither was any other one bridge or track or rock cutting along the railway’s route. Altabba, who works for HTNB Engineering in Boston on the city’s landmark “Big Dig” project, served as technical consultant for SECRETS OF THE DEAD: “Bridge on the River Kwai.” He saw first-hand what is left of the railway and the terrain on which it was built. “Throughout history, engineers have done much bigger, much grander, much longer, on a one-time basis,” Altabba says. “What makes this an engineering feat is the totality of it, the accumulation of factors. The total length of miles, the total number of bridges — over 600, including six to eight long-span bridges — the total number of people who were involved (one-quarter of a million), the very short time in which they managed to accomplish it, and the extreme conditions they accomplished it under. They had very little transportation to get stuff to and from the workers, they had almost no medication, they couldn’t get food let alone materials, they had no tools to work with except for basic things like spades and hammers, and they worked in extremely difficult conditions — in the jungle with its heat and humidity. All of that makes this railway an extraordinary accomplishment.”

In 1942, the Japanese army had recently captured more than 200,000 Allied prisoners of war and desperately needed a new supply route to support its frontline troops in Burma. Under backbreaking conditions, POWs, along with thousands of Asian laborers, were ordered to complete a railway linking Thailand and Burma that would include the infamous “bridge on the River Kwai.” After 14 grueling months of exhaustion and malnourishment, disease, bone-deep leg ulcers, and the loss of 100,000 lives, the POWs and laborers completed the 260-mile “Death Railway.” Meanwhile, the United States military was immersed in the development of an incredible new weapon — a “smart bomb.” Early Allied attempts at bombing the railway’s narrow tracks had failed miserably, even hitting nearby Allied POW camps. Then came the Azimuth Only bomb (the AZON), so named because it could only be steered left or right, not forwards or backwards. The AZON was a standard 1,000-pound bomb with a receiver on its tail that could be guided by radio waves, a stabilizer to prevent rolling, and rudders for steering. In late 1944, a group of rescued POWs provided the first accurate information about strategic targets along the railway, and the AZON, dropped from 10,000 feet, was able to destroy the railway. It is the precursor to the high-accuracy guidable bombs recently deployed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Though records are sketchy, approximately 61,000 Allied prisoners of war are believed to have labored on the railway, including 30,000 British, 18,000 Dutch, 13,000 Australian, and 700 American soldiers. An estimated 16,000 of those troops died, many of them from diseases like cholera, beri beri, malaria, and typhoid, most during an intensified period of construction known as “speedo” that commenced in January 1943. Another 200,000 Asian laborers, mostly Thai, were forced to work on the railway. More than 80,000 lost their lives.

The railway operated for just 21 months before it was crippled by Allied weapons, including the revolutionary radio-controlled AZON bomb. Most of the railway was dismantled soon after the war’s end with the rest lost to the Thai and Burmese jungles. An 80-mile stretch in Thailand from Nong Pladuk to Tha Sao still operates daily.