Decauville Railway Sousse – Kairouan
| Decauville Railway Sousse – Kairouan | |||||||||
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.jpg) Horse-drawn tram at the train station in Sousse
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.gif) Steam operation on the outskirts of Sousse
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| Route length: | 64 km | ||||||||
| Gauge : | 600 mm ( narrow gauge ) | ||||||||
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The Decauville Railway Sousse – Kairouan ( French Chemin de fer Decauville de Sousse à Kairouan ) was a 64 kilometer long Decauville - field railway with a gauge of 600 mm from Sousse to Kairouan in Tunisia.
history
The French army attacked and occupied Kairouan in 1881, the year the French protectorate was established. In three and a half months, pioneers built the 64-kilometer field railway from the port city of Sousse to the then capital Kairouan. It ran largely on an old Roman road .
The first open-type horse-drawn tram cars were delivered to Sousse on January 1, 1882. On February 3, 1882, the first train transported the wounded from Kairouan to Sousse.
The operation was carried out on horses at a speed of 13 km / h, using 150 wagons. The coaches had 16 dos-à-dos seats or, for the transport of the wounded, 8 sleeping places in hammocks on two floors instead of 4 seats each. The freight wagons were designed for a load of 2500 kg.
The train was used according to schedule even after the end of the war. There were 118 cars at the time. In January 1883 an express train was set up that left Sousse every morning and reached Kairouan at a distance of 65 km with regular swaps of horses within 4 hours. Steam locomotives with a gauge of 600 mm were also used. In 1896 the track was changed from 600 mm to 1000 mm gauge.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Rudolf Barth: Route waiting: (Henchir Souatir -) Kasserine - Sbeitla - Kalaa Sghira (- Sousse).
- ^ Victor Cambon (1852-1927): De Bone à Tunis, Sousse et Kairouan. 2nd edition, 1885 and Collection XIX, 2016.
- ↑ Michael Greenhalgh: The Military and Colonial Destruction of the Roman Landscape of North Africa, 1830-1900. Brill, 2014. page 201.
- ^ François Gressin, Liliane Sekula and Daniel Wurmser: Paul Decauville on a type 67 car that was delivered to Sousse before January 1, 1882. In: Bulletin des Amis du Musée Decauville, No. 26/27, March 2003. Page 24.
- ↑ EA number: Ueber Feldeisenbahnen In: E. Schrödtcr and W. Beumer: Zeitschrift für das Eisenhüttenwesen. Volume 12, No. 8, Commissionsverlag by A. Bagel, Düsseldorf, April 15, 1892
- ^ M. Decauville: Portable Railways. Narrow gauge roads in Great Britain. M. Decauville's system. Railways used at the Panama Canal, in Tunis, etc. In: Scientific American Supplement. No. 446, July 19, 1884.