Douala – Ngaoundéré railway line

Douala – Ngaoundéré
The night train Yaoundé – Ngaoundéré
Route length:	929 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Maximum slope :	16.7  ‰
Legend 0 Douala to Kumba 17th Japoma Dibamba Sanaga north arm Sanaga southern arm 84 Edéa Lebnjock Gorge 151 Bidjoka 174 Éséka 181 Njock 201 Malume 219 Macaque 249 Otélé 284 Mbalmayo 307 0 Yaounde Nanga Eboko 294 Bélabo 622 Ngaoundéré

Terminal station in Ngaoundéré

Today's Douala – Ngaoundéré railway was started as a railway from Douala to Mbalmayo during the German colonial rule over Cameroon and was then called the Mittellandbahn . It was carried out in meter gauge. Mbalmayo is located on the Njong , which was navigable for 250 km from there and where there was already steamboat traffic. The railway was built at state expense.

history

Construction began in Douala in 1908 by the German Colonial Railway Construction and Operating Company (DKEBBG). In terms of technical parameters, the Tanganyika Railway in German East Africa was a model. The crossing of two arms of the Sanaga is remarkable . The bridge over the southern arm had to be built without supporting pillars , as the river there was up to 26 m deep. The span of the truss - arch bridge is 159.60 m. It is larger than that of the Victoria Falls Bridge over the Zambezi with 152.40 m.

The first section of the line to Edéa was opened in 1912, the operation was leased to the DKEBBG and operated under the Cameroon Railways (KE). The next section to Bidjoka went into operation at the end of 1913, another to Éséka shortly before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. At this point in time, the railway ran 12 locomotives with tender, 4 tank locomotives, 13 passenger, 2 baggage and 165 freight cars. When the German troops withdrew in the First World War, they blew up the railway bridges.

After the end of World War I the majority came from Cameroon as mandated territory of France , including all railway lines. The former Mittellandbahn now belonged to the Chemins de fer de Cameroun (CFC). The construction of the Douala – Mbalmayo railway project was continued, but the route was diverted to Yaounde , which was reached in 1927. The seat of the colonial administration had been moved there. The gap to Mbalmayo was initially closed by a field railway with a gauge of 600 mm from Otélé . It was not until 1933 that the line was converted to meter gauge.

There were always irregularities in the delivery of the operating coal for the steam locomotive , which was obtained from South Africa . Because of this problem, electrification of the line was even considered in the 1940s . Between Douala and Yaounde there has been a day and a night train every day since 1946, whereby the night train was a freight train that carried couchette cars for travel purposes.

A structural connection to the Duala – Nkongsamba railway was created in 1955 via a 12 km long connecting railway and a 1,850 m long bridge over the Wouri .

The extension of the route over 622 km from Yaoundé to Ngaoundéré was less an attempt to tackle the project of a railway to Chad , which had already been planned in the French colonial era , than it was due to the bauxite mined there , which had to be transported away. The entire line went into operation in 1974. Between 1975 and 1983, part of the Mittellandbahn in the lower section of the line was partially re-routed with the help of the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau , shortened by 48.4 km and the travel time between Douala and Yaoundé reduced from 9 to 6.5 hours .

Intercity traffic between the two cities was introduced around the same time . Passenger traffic consists of six trains a day (2011): two connections between Yaoundé and Douala, one of which is classified as “Intercity”, and a night train connection between Yaounde and Ngaoundéré with sleeping cars .

See also

• Narrow-gauge railway Eséka – Makak
• Éséka railway accident
• Rail transport in Cameroon
• List of German colonial railways

literature

• Franz Baltzer : The colonial railways with a special focus on Africa . Göschen'sche Verlagshandlung, Berlin-Leipzig 1916; Reprint-Verlag-Leipzig, Holzminden, ISBN 978-3-8262-0233-9 .
• Helmut Schroeter: The railways of the former German protected areas in Africa and their vehicles . Frankfurt 1961.
• Helmut Schroeter, Roel Ramaer: The railways in the formerly German protected areas then and now / German Colonial Railways then and now . Krefeld 1993.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Schroeter, p. 61.
2. ↑ Schroeter, p. 58.
3. ↑ Schroeter / Ramaer, p. 127.
4. ↑ See Camrail timetable and tariffs (PDF; 83 kB)