Sometimes Soudan Railway
1874 The Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha established a line from Wadi Halfa to Sarras about 54 km upstream on the east bank of the Nile, as a commercial undertaking. The line did not prove to be commercially viable, and operations were stopped by the Governor-General Charles Gordon in 1878 to reduce expenditure. See Ailsa Janson
1876 'THE SOUDAN RAILWAY.
A project which has long dazzled by its grandeur — the Soudan Railway— is, writes the correspondent of the Times at Alexandria, now being taken seriously in hand. The surveys were made long ago; rolling-stock, machinery, and other material have already gone forward in large quantities to the interior, and further shipments are constantly arriving at Alexandria. It is a great undertaking and must ultimately do good service in the development of the interior, but whether the cost, which is estimated at four millions sterling, is justified by the present state of Egyptian finances, is quite another question, and one worth examination.
After leaving the first cataract, the traveller, in ascending the Nile, finds that the river makes a great curve to the west. The stream is shut in by rock, and the country through which it passes is chiefly barren desert. It runs like silver thread through a dreary waste, only broken by occasion space where are a few huts, a palm grove, and a patch of cultivation. The bed of the river is often rocky, and above the second cataract navigation is very difficult. This great curve is followed by another in the opposite direction, through country of much the same character. The projected railway is for the purpose of abridging these two curves and bringing Egypt into easy communication with the richer provinces that lie beyond them, where the "rivers of Ethiopia" still enrich what was of old the kingdom of the Queen of Sheba.
The railway’s whole length is 550 miles. It starts on the right bank of the Nile at Wady Halfa, a scene of dreary desolation, where is the second cataract. The line, as projected, soon leaves the river and goes through desert, over rocky mountains, across wild gorges, down which, after the rainy season, rush tropical flood waters with almost irresistible violence, to rejoin the river at Kohé, after run of 150 miles. At Kohé a bridge, approached by an embankment, is to be erected. The portion of the bridge crossing the deep water channel will consist of one central opening of 80 metres, and two side openings 30 metres, while the remainder of its length will comprise 26 openings of 18 metres each. The ironwork of this bridge, like all the rest of the material of the railway, has go from Alexandria 300 miles by rail and 600 miles by river. From Kohé to Ambukol, a village at the southern point of the first curve of the river, there is a run of 200 miles through country of much the same character, passing Berber and several smaller towns, the termini on the river of the great caravan routes from Kordofan and Darfur. From Ambukol there is a final run of 150 miles to Shendy, across the Bahinda Desert, uninhabited save by wandering tribes, subject at one season to violent dust storms, and another covered with vast pools, the reservoirs of the tropical rainfall on the impervious slopes of the granite hills. Shendy, a town on the southern edge of the second great curve of the river, is to be the present terminus of the railway, and chosen as being the converging point of the various camel routes for the ports of the Red Sea, for Khartoum and the White Nile district, and for Kharras and the Blue Nile.
Apart from our interest in the construction of this railway, on the ground that its absorption of Egyptian resources (adds the correspondent), it may be important to England from an entirely different reason. It is part of a great plan for an extension of the Egyptian railway system, so as to connect the Mediterranean with the southern end of the Red Sea. From Alexandria to Cairo, from Cairo to Rhoda, on the Nile in Upper Egypt, there is already a railway and from Rhoda steamers run on the Nile to the first cataract. The difficulties the cataract presents to the transit of goods are obviated by a railway of five miles already constructed to the upper level of the river. Hence to Wady Halfa there is again communication by steamer on the Nile, though no regular line of boats as yet is established. When this Soudan railway is completed from Wady to Shendy, the Egyptian Government proposes to continue it Massowah, on the Red Sea. But they are prudent enough to wait until the resources of the country will allow the outlay required for a railway of the same length as the one now to be constructed. It is also proposed in the future to complete a railway from Cairo to Assouan and Wady Halfa. Supposing these schemes are ever carried out, there would be direct communication between Alexandria and Massowah, and England would have an alternative route to India for her soldiers. She would avoid the dangers of the Red Sea, and curtail the length of the journey to India by three days. The distances between the various points are about follows:— ....'. [1]
1877 'The first section of the Nubian railway has been opened for trains and about 6,000 men are busily employed upon the second section. At Koye, higher up, a bridge is to be built across the Nile. This railway has not been pledged to the creditors of Egypt, but belongs to the Government of Soudan, the surplus revenues of which are being applied to its construction.'[2]
The line did not prove to be commercially viable, and operations were stopped by the Governor-General Charles Gordon in 1878 to reduce expenditure.
Note: In 1874 Charles James Appleby 'entered into a contract with the Egyptian Government for the supply of the materials, rolling stock, etc., for the construction and equipment of the first Sudan Railway. The railway having reached Wady Halfa was there abandoned; but some of the materials delivered under the early contract were subsequently used in the completion of the line in 1898 and 1899.'[3]
1884 The line was extended to Akasha on the Nile by the Nile Expedition, but was destroyed by the Ansar when the Anglo-Egyptian troops withdrew to Wadi Halfa.
In 1884, during the Red Sea Expedition, John Aird and Co constructed a 20-mile (32 km) line from Suakin on the Red Sea inland to Otau, but it was abandoned in 1885.
In May 1887, the Wadi Halfa-Saras line was extended again to Kerma, above the third cataract, to support the Anglo-Egyptian Dongola Expedition against the Mahdist State.[9] The line, which was poorly constructed and of little other use, was abandoned in 1905.
The first part of the present-day Sudan Railways, from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamad on the Nile, was a military undertaking and was built by the British in the late 1890s, for use in General Herbert Kitchener's drive against the Mahdist State. During the campaign, the line was pushed to Atbara on the Nile in 1897 and, after the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, was continued to Khartoum, which it reached on the last day of 1899. The line was built in the 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) gauge, the result of Kitchener's use of the rolling stock and rails of that gauge from the old line. That gauge became the standard for all later Sudanese mainline construction
1910 Sudan State Railways. Total of 1,040 miles in operation. Officers - Captain M. E. Sowerby, Chief Engineer; C. G. Hodgson, Locomotive Superintendent; G. E. Mason, Works Manager.[4]
1911 Line was also constructed from Khartoum southward to Sennar within the cotton-growing region of Al Jazirah.
1912 A westward continuation reached El-Obeid, then the country's second-largest city, and the centre of gum arabic production. In the north, a branch line was built from near Abu Hamad to Karima that tied the navigable stretch of the Nile between the fourth and third cataracts into the transport system.
1920s A spur of the railway was built from Hayya, a point on the main line 200 km southwest of Port Sudan, then extended south to the cotton-producing area near Kassala, the grain region of Al Qadarif and, finally, to a junction with the main line at Sennar.