Nigerian Railway Corporation

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Nigerian Railway Corporation
legal form state company
founding 1898
Seat Abuja , Nigeria
management Bello Haliru Mohammed
Number of employees 6516
Branch Transport / logistics
Website nrc.gov.ng

The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) is the state railway company in Nigeria .

history

Rail network in Nigeria
red = Cape gauge, blue = standard gauge

The NRC was founded in 1898 as the Government Department of Railways. It received its current name in 1955. The NRC has gone bankrupt several times over the past 20 years. A lack of maintenance of the infrastructure and the rolling stock as well as a high number of employees led to high losses that were not borne by the state. In 2005, after various reorganizations, the NRC reduced passenger operations to four departures a week from Lagos and from Port Harcourt. Two of the four trains from both cities go to Kano, one to Jos and Maiduguri. Regional traffic is operated between Lagos and Ifaw over a distance of 48 kilometers. This is carried out at the request of the city of Lagos.

Mazi Jetson Mwakwo, director of the NRC 2008, said the rail system in Nigeria suffers from a lack of political support. While the NRC had 45,000 employees between 1954 and 1975, in 2008 it employed just 6,516 people. Mwakwo pointed out that no new wagons had been procured since 1993 and that there were occasional rolling stock up to 60 years old in service. The infrastructure allows speeds of up to 35 km / h.

stretch

General

All NRC routes are not electrified. Only 30 kilometers of this are double- track. These are all located in the greater Lagos area. The railways are mostly made of rails with a meter weight of 29.8 kg, 34.7 kg or 39.7 kg. In total, the NRC network is almost 4,000 kilometers long. The government is considering converting the existing route network from Cape Gauge to standard gauge.

Cape Track

The Nigerian Railway Corporation operates a network of 3,505 kilometers of lines in Cape Gauge .

This network consists of the following lines:

Some extensions of the Cape Gauge Network are planned. However, the route network has not been extended since 1980. The route from Gusau via Kaura Namoda to Sokoto (215 kilometers), from Kano to Katsina (175 kilometers) and from Lagos to Asaba is currently planned (as of January 2012) .

The route to Gusau has been closed since a bridge collapsed in 2002.

The NRC network has no connection to the rail network of neighboring countries.

Standard gauge

In the interior of the country, a standard gauge network is developing very slowly. Its main line is a 217-kilometer line from Oturkpo to the Ajaokuta steel mill . A former standard gauge line of 51.5 kilometers was operated between the Itakp mines and the steel mill in Ajaokuta. There are also plans for an expansion here: From Ajaokuta to Abuja and from Ajaokuta to the port in Warri . Together they would have a length of 500 kilometers. Another planned line runs from the port of Harcourt to Makurdi over a length of 463 kilometers.

In February 2011, construction of the Abuja - Kaduna line began by the Chinese construction company China Civil Engineering Construction , which was finally inaugurated on July 26, 2016. The total cost was $ 870 million. For the 186.5 kilometer route, which begins in Idu 20 kilometers west of the center of Abuja, the express trains need two hours to travel with a top speed of 100 km / h.

Narrow gauge

In addition, a railway line with 762 mm gauge was operated between Zaria and Jos with a length of 194 kilometers. However, this line was closed and dismantled.

Rolling stock

The NRC owns almost 200 diesel locomotives as vehicles , but up to 75% of them are not in use. It also owns 54 shunting locomotives , 480 passenger cars and 4,900 freight cars . Less than 50% of the cars are in working order.

For the passengers , the passenger trains are operated with sleeping cars, air-conditioned 1st class cars and non air-conditioned 2nd class cars. The trains to and from Lagos also have dining cars .

A renewal of the locomotive fleet took place in 2010. The NRC acquired 25 new six-axle C25 locomotives from General Electric .

Technical details

The NRC uses the so-called ABC coupling, which is derived from the Janney coupling, as a coupling . As a braking system, the NRC uses a vacuum braking system that is also used by other railway companies around the world .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Railways Africa report, accessed 2/6/2008
  2. ↑ RAIL CLOSURE PREJUDICES ECONOMY | Railways Africa. Retrieved November 17, 2010 .
  3. ↑ NIGERIA'S ABUJA-KADUNA RAIL PROJECT | Railways Africa. Retrieved February 19, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Keith Barrow: Nigeria inaugurates Abuja - Kaduna railway. In: Railjournal. July 26, 2016, accessed August 22, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Katrin Gänsler: Traveling by train in Nigeria: Safe arrival instead of kidnapping . In: The daily newspaper: taz . May 31, 2019, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed June 1, 2019]).
  6. ^ So long to the 70s as GE locomotives arrive in Nigeria. ( Memento of July 8, 2012 on the Internet Archive ) GE Press Release, February 5, 2010.
  7. ↑ a b derbysulzers.com