Rail transport in Sierra Leone

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  • Current (1067 mm)
    		•
  • Historic (762 mm)
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    The rail transport of Sierra Leone is limited to a currently disused (as of March 2020) private network of 120 kilometers in length. Sierra Leone has had no public rail network since 1974 .

    Rail network

    history

    Congo Town Bridge on the Sierra Leone Mountain Railway (before 1913)
    Historic Cotton Tree Railway Station in Freetown; now the National Museum of Sierra Leone

    The first planning for a rail network in the former British colony began as early as 1872 . Among other things, a connection to a trans- Sahara railway was planned. In 1893 a proposal from the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce was accepted.

    Construction work on the railway began in 1896 and was completed in March of the following year. It was a seven-mile stretch from Freetown to Wellington operated by the Sierra Leone Government Railway . In the following years there were six further expansion stages:

    The state-owned railway company Sierra Leone Government Railway stopped operating its network, which had a gauge of 762 mm , after 77 years in 1974. It linked Freetown , Bo , Kenema and Daru . A branch line led to Makeni .

    In addition, between 1903 and 1929 there was a 5.5- mile rail network from the Cotton Tree in the center of Freetown to Hill Station in the district of the same name . It was called the "Mountain Railway". This was mainly used by wealthy residents as a means of transport from their preferred residential area to the city.

    Other short routes without the use of towing vehicles presumably existed at the beginning of the 20th century, including in Freetown harbor .

    Current

    Former train station in Magburaka

    The line in Kapspur ( 1067 mm ) from Marampa to the industrial port of Pepel operated by the Sierra Leone Development Corporation Railway between 1933 and 1975 was used again from 2011 to 2015. It has a length of 74 kilometers. Since 2009, it has been renewed by the mining company African Minerals and extended by 126 kilometers.

    planning

    The construction of another line by the Chinese company Kingho Energy Group between the mining region Tonkolili and the coastal town of Sulima on a distance of 250 kilometers had been planned since 2013. The project was not implemented after the company withdrew from Sierra Leone in late 2018.

    See also

    literature

    Web links

    Individual evidence

    1. ^ Railways in Sierra Leone. Sinfin.net, accessed July 25, 2013 , 2011
    2. ↑ a b c The Railways of Salone. Sierra Leone National Railway Museum. Retrieved June 8, 2017.
    3. ↑ Sierra Leone's Medium-Term National Development Plan 2019–2023. Government of Sierra Leone, 2019, p. 122.
    4. ↑ a b Sierra Leone, China sign $ 8bn deals. BusinessReport, July 6, 2013. Retrieved July 25, 2013
    5. ↑ ABM relinquishes interests in Sierra Leone to focus on new strategy. African Battery Metals, August 30, 2018.