However, due to an outbreak of disease, it was abandoned in 1910.[5] Since then, coffee production was concentrated in the west coast area. Tenom received attention when the British North Borneo Chartered Company (BNBCC) established coffee and other plantations in the area. To take the resources to major towns, a railway line from Melalap to Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu) was built by the British in the late 1890s.