List of German colonial railways

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Railroad and Transport Map of Africa (1906)

The German colonial railways in the colonies of the German Empire emerged from the end of the 19th century until 1916. In the German colonies, rail lines with a total length of around 5500 kilometers were built in peacetime. This corresponded to about 7.5 percent of the rail network within what was then the German Empire. The construction of these railways primarily served the control as well as the economic development and exploitation of the colonies. Some railway projects were not carried out due to the First World War or their construction was discontinued due to the war. But even during the First World War, dozens of kilometers of railways were built in German East Africa . The rapid adoption of some of these railways for passenger transport by the colored population even surprised the railroad operators.

Short field and factory tracks are not listed in full. Light railways were used, for example, in the construction of the radio stations Kamina ( Togo ) and Apia ( Samoa ). An example of a works railway was the operation of the Lomé landing stage in Togo. Such railways were used for phosphate mining on the Pacific islands of Angaur and Nauru . Within the city Tanga ran narrow gauge - tracks .

Railways in the German colonies

Flag of the East African Railway Company (around 1900)
German colonial railway in the sandy desert of South West Africa (before 1910)
Old German train station in Qingdao (2009)

The following railway lines were built or planned in the German colonial areas:

German New Guinea

German East Africa

German South West Africa

Cameroon

Kiautschou

Samoa

Togo

literature

Web links

Commons : Rail transport in the German colonies  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Winfried Wolf: Railway and car madness. Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-89136-412-1 , p. 73.
  2. The construction of the Telefunken station Kamina (Togo), in: Telefunken-Zeitung , 2nd year, No. 12, June 1913, p. 166ff. ( entire issue as pdf; 3.45 MB )
  3. ^ The construction of the Apia station on Samoa, in: Telefunken-Zeitung , 3rd vol., No. 13, January 1914, pp. 28ff. ( entire issue as pdf; 2.13 MB )
  4. Entry “Landungsbrücken” in the German Colonial Lexicon from 1920
  5. ^ Photo of the narrow-gauge tracks in Tanga, before 1914