Western Oasis Lines
| Oasis Junc.-Kharga | |||||||||
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.jpg) Western Oases Railway, 1917
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| Route length: | 200 km | ||||||||
| Gauge : | 762 mm ( narrow gauge ) | ||||||||
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The Western Oasis Lines or the Western Oasis Railway (WOR) built and operated a 200 km long narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of 762 mm (2 feet 6 inches ) in Egypt .
history
The line was built under the direction of Major Burton, surveyor for the Haifa-Baghdad Railway. The line was laid at a speed of 9 km per day and put into operation in 1907. It ran from Oasis Junction to Kharga . Initially there were two trains a week in each direction. They had both an observation car and a saloon car with leather-upholstered seats and blue-tinted windows. One or more locomotives from 1922 to 1937 were from Nasmyth, Wilson & Co.
From 1974 to 1989, a 680 km long, standard-gauge new line was built from Safaga on the Red Sea via Qina to Kharga . This is where the Tartour mines are located, where phosphate was supposed to be mined underground. During the long construction period of the line, the world price for phosphate fell so much that mining became unprofitable.
literature
- AE Durrant, AA Jorgensen and CP Lewis: Steam in Africa. Hamlyn, London 1981.
Web links
- Iain Alexander: Bahariya Military Railway 1916. December 18, 2015.
- Aline Kazandjian: Dune Song
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Keith Taylorson: Gauge at War 2. Quoted in: Ifan Lloyd: "Narrow Oasis Junc. To El Kharga."
- ↑ World-wide 30 "Gauge Railways.
- ^ Robert SG Fletcher: British Imperialism and 'The Tribal Question': Desert Administration and Nomadic Societies in the Middle East, 1919-1936. OUP Oxford, 2015. page 82.
- ^ Douglas Sladen: Queer Things About Egypt. Read Books Ltd, 2013.
- ^ Nasmyth, Wilson and Co. Locomotive Specification Book.
- ↑ David Sims: Egypt's Desert Dreams: Development Or Disaster? Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 238-240.
- ^ David Sims takes a hard look at Egypt's struggling desert development. February 2015. Retrieved October 17, 2017.
- ↑ Nagdy M. Farag U, Th and REEs in Egyptian phosphate rocks.