It pushed through malarial swamps and hostile tribal territory, served up workers as dinner for man-eating lions and presented engineering challenges and costs so severe that it was dubbed the ”lunatic line” in Britain.
More than a century on, the railway stretching from Mombasa to Uganda still operates, though less as a functional train service than a curiosity to be enjoyed — or endured — by time-rich locals and tourists looking for faded colonial charm. ”The line is obsolete,” said Golicha Tatache, a manager at Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC). ”If you are in a hurry in this country you use a bus, not a train.”
But that could soon change. Kenya plans to shunt its rail network into the 21st century by commissioning a new high-speed line to run across the country. The proposed high-capacity standard gauge line will reduce the journey time from Nairobi to Mombasa from 13 hours to three hours and boost business prospects across the region, according to the KRC.
The plan is highly ambitious. The international tender for transaction and design advice published this month shows double-decker passenger and freight trains cruising at up to 160km/h rather than the 32km/h managed by the current engines. Both the $4,2-billion estimated cost and the short timeframe — construction is scheduled to begin in late 2011 and end in 2016 — are likely to raise eyebrows, given the government’s finances and record on infrastructure projects.
But railway officials say it will go ahead, and point out that the original line was also strongly questioned. For the British colonial authorities, the main aim of the railway was to allow access to raw materials in Uganda and prevent that country falling to France. However, the huge cost was questioned in Westminster, where it was suggested that whenever the government ”annexes some wretched, miserable jungle in the centre of Africa, we will be called upon to build a railroad to it”. A satirical poem offered: ”It clearly is naught but a lunatic line.”
The imperialists prevailed and construction of the 921km gauge line began in 1896 and was finished five years and 1 200 bridges later. Hundreds of Kenyan and Indian labourers died during construction, mostly from disease. The man-eating lions of Tsavo accounted for 132 people, including a British policeman dragged off a carriage as he slept, according to the Kenyan Railway Museum.
As with the ”lunatic line”, Kenya’s motivation in building a modern railway network is mainly commercial. The port of Mombasa is the main gateway to the region but the railway’s age and neglect means just 5% of long-distance freight in Kenya goes by train, according to KRC, compared with 90% in countries such as India and China. Transportation expenses, mostly related to road haulage, can constitute nearly half of the total cost of goods produced in East Africa.”Commercially this line is viable and without it we can forget about competing in the global market,” said Tatache.
KRC says plans for new lines running from Kenya to Juba in South Sudan, and to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, are also at an advanced stage. It envisages a modern network across East Africa by 2050. – guardian.co.uk