Rail transport in Uganda

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Two Ugandan diesel locomotives with a freight train

Today, rail traffic in Uganda is mainly limited to two routes: the Uganda Railway to Kenya , which connects Uganda via Nairobi with Mombasa on the Indian Ocean , and a remnant of the Tororo – Arua Mine railway .

history

Kampala station reception building

On August 14, 1896, the British Parliament passed the legal and financial basis for the construction of the railway from the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria , which began that same year. The line was built in meter gauge. The model was Indian railways, which is where some of the original material came from. On October 1, 1903, responsibility for the Uganda Railway (UR) was transferred to the administration of the British East Africa colony .

On February 26, 1926, the Uganda Railway was renamed Kenya and Uganda Railway (KUR), in 1927 Kenya and Uganda Railway and Harbors (KUR & H).

Lok73U20 (manufacturer: Henschel, Kassel) on March 2, 2018 in Jinja station
9620 (GE B23-7, ex USA) with a freight train near Lugazi (Kawolo) on March 2, 2018

On May 1, 1948, the Kenya and Uganda Railway and Harbors and Tanganyika Railway and Port Services were merged to form the East African Railways and Harbors Administration (EAR & H) and, after the country gained independence in 1963, in 1969 into East African Railways (EAR) renamed. After the customs and economic union between Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania broke up in 1977 due to the widely divergent political and economic systems, the part of the joint railway that was on Ugandan territory was renamed the Uganda Railway Cooperation (URC). Due to the dictatorship of Idi Amin and the subsequent collapse of the state structures in Uganda, rail traffic had to be stopped in 1979. From 1986 it was then gradually resumed. On November 1, 2006, the URC was taken over by the Rift Valley Railways Consortium , the same private operator that took over the Kenya Railways Cooperation (KR) on the same day . After Kenya terminated the contract with Rift Valley Railways on July 31, 2017 due to insufficient investments and non-compliance with commitments to rehabilitate the line, Uganda also terminated the operation of the Rift Valley Railways two months later. Since then, the railway in Uganda has been called the Uganda Railway Cooperation (URC) again.

stretch

Meter gauge network

The first concrete plans for the construction of a railway on Ugandan territory from 1909 aimed at connecting the port of Jinja on Lake Victoria and the Namasagali on Lake Kioga . The railway ran along the White Nile , was called the Busoga Railway and was 93 km long. It went into operation in 1911. They also operated the shipping traffic on Lake Kioga. In 1924 it was taken over by the Uganda Railway .

The construction of the Uganda Railway began from Mombasa.

The Uganda Railway was opened in sections from 1896. First it was taken to Kisumu (Kenya) on Lake Victoria, which it reached in 1904. From there, there was a connection with steam ships belonging to the railway to Jinja and Kampala in Uganda. The railway line to there was not continued until 1923, starting with the existing line in Nakuru (km 188.1 from Nairobi), it crossed the border to Uganda in 1926. In 1929 it was connected to the Busoga railway at Mbulamuti station . This section of the route between Busembatia and Mbulamuti was replaced by a much shorter route in 1961. The old line was reconnected in 1962 for direct traffic to Namasagali at Bukonte station , but was completely abandoned in 1968. In 1930 the Uganda Railway reached Kampala. Here, the White Nile at Jinja was initially a ferry crossed. The bridge was not completed until 1931 and train traffic over the bridge began on January 14, 1931. In 1952 the Ugandan government decided to extend the route to Kasese (km 585.8). This extension was opened in sections from 1953 to 1958, but closed in 1998 .

The second important railway line in Uganda is the Tororo – Arua Mine railway line , which branches off the Uganda Railway in a northerly direction just beyond the border with Kenya.

Other railways

A number of farms and mines maintained narrow-gauge railways for in-house purposes , mostly with a gauge of 610 mm and one with a gauge of 762 mm. There was also a short-term monorail from Kampala to Luzira , the operating time of which is specified differently with 1909-1912 and 1924.

business

The condition of the tracks in Uganda is bad today. Only the sections from Kampala to Port Bell on Lake Victoria, from Kampala to Kenya and from Tororo to Opit are still used for freight traffic. Since 1993, the Tororo - Pakwach route has hardly been passable.

On September 14, 2013, the first commercial train in 20 years ran on the continuous meter-gauge route from the Kenyan port of Mombasa via Nairobi and Eldoret to the Kenyan border in Tororo and on to Gulu . In 2019 there was no train service between Tororo and Gulu, and the route has not been used for several years. It is to be reconstructed in meter gauge soon after the further construction of the standard gauge line from Naivasha in Kenya was canceled without explanation in May 2019.

Passenger traffic in Uganda only operates from Monday to Friday as a suburban connection between Kampala and the Namanve industrial district.

Planning

In 2007, the possibilities of building a rail network between Uganda and its neighbors, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Sudan (today: South Sudan ), Kenya and Tanzania were examined . The following year, a memorandum was signed between Sudan and Uganda on the construction of a 920 km long rail link between Gulu (on the Tororo – Arua Mine railway line) and Wau (today: South Sudan ) via Nimule and Juba . This planning became obsolete again a short time later, when on October 27, 2008 the Presidents of Kenya and Uganda, Mwai Kibaki and Yoweri Museveni set up a joint ministerial commission to investigate whether the construction of a standard-gauge rail link from the port of Mombasa to Uganda, Rwanda , Burundi , the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan (today: South Sudan) is possible.

literature

  • Ronald Hardy: The Iron Snake . New York 1965.
  • Neil Robinson: World Rail Atlas and historical summary. Vol. 7: North, East and Central Africa. World Rail Atlas Ltd., 2009. ISBN 978-954-92184-3-5 , pp. 78-80, maps 43, 44.
  • Matthias Hille: The railroad in Uganda - aged trains on shaky tracks . Fern-Express issue 2/2018, pp. 10–15.

Movies

  • East African Railways and Harbors : The Way to the East . East Africa 1955. 16 mm color film. 35 minutes. (Describes the construction of the Mombasa-Kampala railway line.)
  • Gateway Films : The Way to the West . East Africa 1958. 16 mm color film. 37 minutes. (Describes the construction of the Kampala-Kasese railway line.)
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WgzyG_75T0 Matthias Hille: Railway bridge over the White Nile in Jinja on February 21, 2019, 6 minutes (two freight trains crossing the bridge)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robinson, pp. 79f.
  2. ↑ Robinson, p. 80, especially note 12.
  3. ^ Uganda's Northern Line revived , Railway Gazette International, accessed October 9, 2013
  4. ↑ Robinson, p. 79.
  5. ↑ Robinson, p. 79.
  6. ^ John Huntley: Railways in the Cinema . London 1969, p. 166.
  7. ^ John Huntley: Railways in the Cinema . London 1969, p. 166.