Maputo train station

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Maputo Railway Station
View of the train station in 1988, in the foreground the memorial to those who fell in the First World War
View of one of the platforms

The station of Maputo , in Portuguese usually Estação do Caminho de Ferro de Maputo or short CFM , is the main station of the Mozambican capital. It is located on Praça dos Trabalhadores in the Baixa district (officially Central C in the Kampfumo district ). The terminal station building was built between 1908 and 1910 according to plans by the architects Alfredo Augusto Lisboa de Lima , Mário Veiga and Ferreira da Costa . There is currently little train traffic on the three railway lines of the southern network of the state railway company CFM to Swaziland ( Linha de Goba ), South Africa ( Linha de Ressano Garcia ) and Zimbabwe ( Linha de Limpopo ).

history

The first station on the site of the current building went into operation in 1895 when the private Pretoria – Lourenço Marques railway line opened and consisted of a simple wooden structure. However, in order to give the railway line a representative entrance and underline its importance for trade, the owners, the Bucellato brothers, decided to replace the building. The architects Alfredo Augusto Lisboa de Lima, Mário Veiga and Ferreira da Costa were commissioned to design the new reception building in 1908, while one of the two owners, Pietro Bucellato, designed the stucco facade. The legend that Gustave Eiffel was responsible for the construction continues to this day. The opening took place on March 19, 1910 with the first run of two trains to São José de Lhanguene.

For some years now, the station has been increasingly used for other purposes due to the low traffic. A bar has moved into a former waiting hall, and fashion shows, parties and other dance events take place on the platforms at weekends. A railway museum is to move into the rear of the station.

In the course of a project by the Spanish development cooperation organization AECID and the Mozambican national monument management, the station was included in a newly established list of monuments in 2013 and is therefore under legal protection. A plaque at the entrance to the building indicates this. In addition, the station is registered in the Portuguese monument database Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico (SIPA), which also includes buildings from the former colonies, under the code 00031693.

Various rankings count the station as one of the “most beautiful in the world” and the “most beautiful in Africa”, including the rankings of the US magazines Newsweek and Travel + Leisure.

traffic

There is daily rail traffic from the station operated by the state-owned railway company Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique (CFM). On the three routes served ( Linha de Goba , Linha de Ressano Garcia and Linha de Limpopo ), however, there is only single train traffic without a regular timetable. The most common train connections go to the two suburbs of Matola and Marracuene .

Web links

Commons : Maputo Train Station  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ From a technical point of view, the train station corresponds to a main train station ( Estação Central dos Caminhos de Ferro ), as there are other train stations in the urban area of ​​Maputo. However, this distinction is not made linguistically in Maputo.
  2. ^ Luigi Corvaja: Maputo. Desenho e Arquitectura, Faculdade de Faculdade de Arquitectura e Planeamento Físisco da Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo 2003, without ISBN
  3. ↑ There are various details regarding the date. In Morais, João Sousa: Maputo, Património da Estrutura e Forma Urbana, Topologia do Lugar , Livros Horizonte, 2001, p. 110, the construction period was from 1913 to 1916. According to the monument administration, the construction work took place between 1908 and 1910.
  4. ^ Ana Cristina Pereira: Maputo, ontem e hoje. Público, March 9, 2013, accessed January 7, 2014 .
  5. ^ Abdul Razak Mussa: Governo identifica património da capital. (No longer available online.) Economia-Real.com, June 24, 2013, archived from the original on January 7, 2014 ; accessed on January 7, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.economia-real.com
  6. ^ Entry in the Portuguese monument database SIPA
  7. ↑ Jaime Cunningham: Train Stations as Grand as the Journeys. Newsweek.com, January 9, 2009, accessed January 7, 2014 .
  8. ↑ oA: World's Most Beautiful Train Stations. Travelandleisure.com, August 2011, accessed January 7, 2014 .


Coordinates: 25 ° 58 ′ 15.7 ″  S , 32 ° 33 ′ 51.8 ″  E