Rail transport in Tanzania

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The rail transport in Tanzania is now in two technically independent railway systems, the Tanzanian National Railways and the TAZARA operated.

Railway network in Tanzania

history

Zanzibar

The first railway line was built on Unguja in 1879, connecting the Sultan's Palace in Stone Town with his country estate in Chukwani, ten kilometers to the south. The wagons were initially pulled by mules. A Bagnall locomotive was used from 1881 . After the death of Sultan Bargash bin Said , this railway was scrapped.

From 1905 to 1930 there was another route that led from Stone Town to the Sultan's Palace in Bububu to the north .

German colonial times

Kigoma station, track side
Flag of the East African Railway Company (OAEG)

The first railway lines on the mainland were built in colonial times when the area of ​​today's Tanzania belonged to German East Africa .

North runway

In 1891 the German East African Society founded a subsidiary with the aim of establishing a connection between Tanga on the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria . Here and on the other main lines of the colony, the meter gauge was chosen as the standard. In addition, field railways with a smaller gauge , usually 600 mm , were built for individual sisal plantations .

The construction of the railway from Tanga to the hinterland, the Usambara Railway , began in 1893. In 1894 the first section to Pongwe was opened. But the "railway company for German East Africa" went after two years and only 40 km distance erected to Muhesa in bankruptcy . The German government then took over the project, and on July 12, 1899 the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Muhesa – Korogwe line was set. From 1903 the line from Korogwe (84 km) to Mombo (129 km) was extended and inaugurated in 1905. In 1908/09 it reached Bwiko near Mkomazi and in October 1911 Moshi (352 km). A planned extension to Aruscha (86 km) was no longer possible with the beginning of the First World War .

Center track

In 1904, the East African Railway Company (OAEG) was founded to advance a railway line from Dar es Salaam towards Lake Tanganyika , the East African Central Railway . Kigoma was reached on February 2, 1914. In 1914 work began on driving a line from Tabora to the area of residence Rwanda , the Rwanda Railway . This project was only partially realized when the First World War broke out in August 1914. During the war, a temporary field railway was built between Mombo and Handeni for the protection force .

British protectorate

Already during the First World War, a railway connection from Voi to Tanganyika was created in 1915/16 , which connected to the Usambara Railway southeast of Moshi . Since both the British East Africa ( Kenya ) and the Usambara Railway have a gauge of 1000 mm, the vehicles could easily be transferred. The British occupied Tanganyika was the United Kingdom as a League of Nations - mandate awarded. On April 1, 1919, the new colonial power established Tanganyika Railways and Port Services as the operating company of the railways in the mandate area.

In 1928 the Tabora – Mwanza line was opened using the German preparatory work for the Rwanda Railway, and in 1930 the Usambara Railway was extended to Arusha . The Msagali - Hororo line was opened as a branch line of the Zentralbahn in 1948, and the Kaliua - Mpanda line in 1949/1950 . The route to Hororo was closed again in 1951.

In 1948 Tanganyika Railways and Port Services merged with the partner organization that existed in Uganda and Kenya to form the East African Railways and Harbors Administration (from 1969: East African Railways Cooperation ).

From 1949, the Overseas Food Cooperation set up a network, later referred to as the Southern Province Railway , within the framework of the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme, with a gauge of 610 mm in the south of Tanganyika, which connected the port of Mikindani with the peanut growing regions in the hinterland, ultimately more than Reached 250 km route length and in 1952 passed to the East African Railways and Harbors Administration .

Republic of Tanzania

From 1961 Tanzania became independent in several steps and united with Zanzibar in a federation . During this time, the existing network was expanded in 1963 by a coastal connection between the Zentralbahn and the Usambarabahn and in 1965 by a branch line from the Zentralbahn to the south, from Kilosa to Kidatu . The southern Tanzanian narrow-gauge network was shut down in 1963.

From 1964 talks took place on a rail link between Tanzania and Zambia . After Great Britain showed no interest in it, the People's Republic of China got involved in the project. The contractual basis for this was concluded in 1967, and the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) was founded a year later as a condom line between Tanzania and Zambia. The TAZARA was built in the 1067 mm Cape gauge, which is new for Tanzania but is common in southern Africa . The route was opened in sections in 1973 and 1974. In 1976 a branch line to Kitadu was opened, where the branch line from the Zentralbahn ends in 1000 mm gauge.

Due to the different politics and the diverging economic development in the participating states, the East African Union broke up in 1977 , which also disintegrated all common structures. The Tanzanian Railway - without the TAZARA - has now been reorganized as the Tanzania Railways Cooperation (TRC). Economically, the railways went downhill due to increasing car traffic, corruption and political neglect. A number of connections were shut down (e.g. between Arusha and Moshi) or passenger traffic was abandoned, such as on the Usambara Railway .

Rail transport today

Two diesel locomotives in front of a passenger train in the TRC station in Dar es Salaam
Freight train in Dar es Salaam

There are three classes of passenger cars, the first exclusively and the second also in the form of a sleeping car . Second class sleeping cars correspond to the standard of a couchette car . Theoretically possible cross-border traffic to Uganda ( ferry from Mwanza ) and after Kenya is due to political differences and political unrest in practice for decades does not take more. There is also no change of gauge to the 1067 mm track of the TAZARA in the cities where the two systems meet.

TRC system

For many years the TRC's traffic has decreased. Passenger trains currently only run regularly on the Zentralbahn and two lines that branch off from it. The railways are inferior to the competition from buses in terms of transport frequency, price and speed. The rotting fleet of cars can no longer compensate for this in terms of comfort. In 2011 there will only be one passenger train per week. Freight traffic has also almost completely shifted to the road.

Since 2003 the Tanzanian government has been looking for a solution in the privatization of its state railway. On September 3, 2007, Tanzania Railway Ltd. was founded. , a company in which Tanzania holds 49% and the Indian company Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES) Ltd. (TRC) holds 51%. The TRC is operated by RITES. The World Bank approved after this consolidation a credit of 33 million US dollars to modernize infrastructure and rolling stock. 90 locomotives, 1,280 freight cars and 110 passenger cars were to be replaced. As a result, there were discussions about network expansions, from which - until now - nothing has followed. The routes and services that had been closed in the years before were not resumed.

According to the president's instructions, the former Usambara line will be repaired in 2018, and the work has been completed by Mombo. Between Mombo and Arusha, the track body is interrupted, washed out and overgrown several times (as of October 2018).

TAZARA

TAZARA train at the entrance to Mbeya

On the TAZARA route, which runs within Tanzania, three passenger trains run in each direction per week. Freight traffic is also not very important, as the connection in the port of Dar es Salaam never worked adequately and the efficiency of South African ports never reached. One to three times a year which runs South African luxury train Pride of Africa of the operator Rovos Rail in relation Cape Town -Daressalam of the journey.

Standard gauge project SGR Dar-Morogoro

On February 3, 2017, a contract was signed between the government of Tanzania, the Turkish Yapı Merkezi and the Portuguese Mota-Engil for the construction of a standard-gauge railway line from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro ( SGR Dar-Morogoro ). It should be 207 km long. Construction began in April 2017 with the laying of the foundation stone by President John Magufuli and is expected to be completed in 30 months. The route is the first section of a larger 2,200 km project to connect Dar es Salaam with Kigali in Rwanda , Musongati in Burundi and the Tanzanian Mwanza on Lake Victoria . The total cost of nine billion US dollars will be financed in the amount of six to seven billion US dollars through a loan from the Chinese Eximbank . The maximum speed on the electrified route should be up to 160 km / h. The planning is in the hands of the Danish engineering office COWI . Its services also include planning work for a system of access roads and required bridges as well as freight stations. Preparatory geotechnical investigations have also been carried out by COWI.

The main stations on the route are initially Dar es Salaam , Pugu , Soga , Kwala , Ngerengere and Morogoro .

During a visit by representatives of the South Korean railway company Korail , a consultancy agreement was signed with Reli Assets Holding Company (RAHCO) to support this railway project.

See also

  • Cape Cairo Plan - unrealized British plans for a rail link from Egypt through the British colonies of East Africa to South Africa

literature

  • Franz Baltzer : The colonial railways with a special focus on Africa. Berlin 1916. Reprint: Leipzig 2008. ISBN 978-3-8262-0233-9 .
  • Neil Robinson: World Rail Atlas and Historical Summary 7 = North, East ans Central Africa . o. O. 2009, p. 70ff. ISBN 978-954-92184-3-5 .
  • Helmut Schroeter: The railways of the former German protected areas in Africa and their vehicles = The vehicles of the German railways 7. 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.

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Website of the Nairobi Railway Museum (English)
  2. ^ Report on the operation and work on the Usambara Railway for the months April – September 1899. (…) b. New Muhesa – Karogwe line . In: German East African Newspaper . Number 32/1899 (Volume I), October 7, 1899, ZDB ID 2382045-7 . v. Roy, Morogoro 1899, p. 2. - Text online (PDF; 7.7 MB).
  3. ↑ Klaus J. Groth: More steam! Build tracks! Ed .: Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 4/2014 . Hamburg January 25, 2014.
  4. ↑ Reinhard K. Lochner: Battle in the Rufiji Delta. The end of the small cruiser "Königsberg". The German Navy and Schutztruppe in East Africa during the First World War . Wilhelm-Heyne-Verlag, Munich 1987, p. 57, ISBN 3-453-02420-6 .
  5. ↑ (Eng.)
  6. ↑ a b c Katare Mbashiru: Dar-Moro SGR stretch for timely completion . News from July 19, 2018 on www.dailynews.co.tz (English)
  7. ^ NN: Turkish Influence Spreads . In: HaRakevet 116 (March 2017). ISSN 0964-8763, p. 23.
  8. ^ Anne-Cécile Robert: New rails for East Africa - LMd. Retrieved March 29, 2019 .
  9. ^ COWI: New standard gauge railway from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, Tanzania . on www.cowi.com (English)
  10. ^ Fidelis John: Construction of Dar-Moro Standard Gauge Railway in Tanzania at 46% . on www.constructionreviewonline.com (English)