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Reading a book in French by Jose Banuado, I have discovered more about the Sospel to Menton tramway.

 

The Menton-Sospel line is the only one in the TNL network to have seen steam locomotives.

https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2018/06/08/the-menton-to-sospel-tramway-revisited-again-chemins-de-fer-de-provence-61

 

This post builds on previous ones, particularly ...

 

https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2018/02/23/the-sospel-to-menton-tramway-revisited-chemins-de-fer-de-provence-51

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We are now in Kampala and preparing to travel on to Kasese.

 

In 1994, I attempted to travel to Kasese and I might have been able to do so if I was prepared to wait in Kampala for the possiblity that a train migth run. In the end my trip to the South West of Uganda was much better served by a road journey via Masaka, Mbarara and Kabale.

 

Before we take one of those intermittent passenger services from the last century, we take a good look round Kampala Railway Station.

This post (below) is the penultimate post on the direct route from Mombasa to Kasese. After this there will be three further posts. One to complete the line to Kasese, one to review an old and defunct branch line running north from Jinja and a final post which will seek to cover the locomotives and rolling stock on the Uganda Railway .....

 

https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2018/06/10/uganda-railways-part-20-kampala

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This next post relates to the western extension of the Uganda Railway through to Kasese and the Kilembe Mines. (I am expecting to post twice more about the Uganda Railway. There is one branchline which I have to follow and then I plan to write about the locomotives and rolling stock on the line.)
 

 

The Western Extension, as it was known, was built and opened in the mid-1950s, its main target was to reach the Kilembe Copper Mines in the west of Uganda. Kasese was built alongside the Mines and has grown since then into a reasonable size town with industry and tourism building its economy.
 
Official sanction for building the railway to Mityana was given in 1951, and for the continuation to Kasese in 1952. The decision rested upon a guaranteed source of traffic at Kilembe, and was prompted by the fact that mining development was dependent on some positive step to improve communications. There seemed little doubt that the line would attract some Congo traffic, which would provide new revenue for E.A.R. & H., while the Uganda Government was much encouraged by the very favourable report of an Economic Survey Committee. The concluding sentence of the report reflects the tone of the whole: ‘The committee desires to record its firm conviction that this project will prove eminently successful. and contribute materially to the welfare and prosperity of the people of Uganda”. The capital cost of the extension was £5.25 million, and the Uganda Government provided the Railway Administration with a loan to cover this.
 
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I have only just found this thread. Your blog looks to be quite a resource, I look forward to having a closer look.

 

Meanwhile, happy travels.

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I have only just found this thread. Your blog looks to be quite a resource, I look forward to having a closer look.

 

Meanwhile, happy travels.

 

Thank you!

This is the last post relating directly to the lines of the Uganda Railway and covers the first railway built in Uganda. The final post on the Uganda Railway will cover the locomotives and rolling stock on the network.
 

 

"There were two very early railway lines in Uganda. Port Bell to Kampala was one. The other was an earlier line from Jinja to Namasagali via Mbulamuti. We encountered this line as we travelled from Tororo to Jinja earlier in this series of posts. Indeed the original line from Tororo travelled to Mbulamuti to meet the older line from Jinja to Namasagali. At that time there was a good justification for this. Namagali was a significant point on an 'overland' journey from Mombasa to Cairo! Meeting the line from Jinja to Namasagali at its mid-pint allowed easy access to both significant destinations and beyond them to the Nile and to Lake Victoria."
 
 
There is much to explore in the Great Lakes region in Africa! This series of posts relates only to the railways providing access to Uganda but there were a whole variety of different transport services in the area which would warrant further study!
Edited by rogerfarnworth
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My original plan was to provide details of locomotives and rolling stock on the Railway in a single post. This has become a little unwieldy so further posts will follow this one ...

 

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It was my intention, before starting this exercise to cover all locomotives and rolling stock in a single blog post. As I began to review the available information in books and on the internet, it seemed that there was enough material to justify more than one post. This and the following posts will not be fully comprehensive in nature but I hope that they provide some insights that are valuable.

 

Probably, along with many other people, my attention is primarily drawn to the Garratt locomotives on these lines. However, I will attempt to reflect the full range of motive power and rolling stock on the line, references are given where ever possible. Everything in this first post predates the arrival of the Garratt locomotives.

 

Early Locomotives on the Uganda Railway (1896-1926)

 

At first, all locomotives were ....

 

https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2018/06/17/uganda-railways-part-23-locomotives-and-rolling-stock-part-a

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The first of these posts about locomotives and rolling stock on the railways of Uganda and Kenya covered locomotives used by the Uganda Railway. This second post primarily covers locomotives introduced by the Kenya Uganda Railway up until it handed over to the East African Railways Corporation in 1948.

 

Locomotives on the Kenya and Uganda Railway and Harbours Lines (1927- 1948)

 

In 1926/27 the Uganda Railway was replaced first by the Kenya and Uganda Railways in 1926 and then by the Kenya and Uganda Railways and Harbours (KURH) Corporation in 1927, when the powers-that-be placed Mombasa Harbour into the same company as the railways.

 

Kenya and Uganda Railways and Harbours (KURH) ran harbours, railways and lake and river ferries in Kenya Colony and the UgandaProtectorate until 1948. It included the Uganda Railway, which it extended from Nakuru to Kampala in 1931. In the same year it built a branch line to Mount Kenya. [1]

 

https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2018/06/19/uganda-railways-part-24-locomotives-and-rolling-stock-part-b-1927-to-19/

 

The Kenya Uganda Railway introduced Beyer Garratt locomotives to the network. These were massive machines with huge pulling power which suited the lightly constructed lines on which they ran.

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One of the small snippets of information I have encountered while writing the series of posts on the Uganda Railway and its successors is an almost passing comment made in a number of texts about the Kenya Uganda Railway Beyer-Garratts numbered 41-44, 51 and 53. These comments refer to these locomotives being sold to Indo-China.

 

Someone asked me whether there was any information about what happened to these locos in any of the main texts about the metre-gauge lines in East Africa. The only specific reference appears to relate to the locos going to the 'Yunnan Railway'.

 

It might be that others can shed more light on this, but I thought that it was worth following up. The post below is the result of this.

 

https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2018/06/24/indo-china-to-yunnan-railway

 

Research suggests that there are two possible locations for these locos operations after leaving East Africa. The first, initially seeming the most likely, is the Burma-Yunnan Railway which was a British project. The second was a French project. We spend a little time focussing on each project before some final observations are made at the end of this post

 

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I think you've basically answered your question in your linked article.  The "Yunnan Railway" refers to a line built by the French from Hai Phong (Indo-China, later North Vietnam) towards Kunming (Yunnan-fu) in southern China and finally completed in 1910, albeit with appalling loss of life on its final (northern) section.  The British, having annexed Burma, had intended (and started before their French rivals) to construct a line to Kunming from Mandalay, but failed to complete their line due to difficulties with the terrain and problems elsewhere in the Empire!  So it was the French line that acquired these locomotives in 1939.

 

As you have picked up, the locomotives were renumbered 201-206, in sequence.  They successfully performed with trains loaded to 500 tons, but were too large for some of the infrastructure (e.g. turntables).  They had seen little service before the Japanese invasion and closure of the northern section of the line.

 

There is a very readable account concerning the Yunnan railway (in English) in "The Railways and Tramways of Viet Nam" (Doling), which draws heavily on the standard reference (in French) “Les Chemins de Fer de la France d’Outre-Mer” (Part 2, Hulot, which I see has been referenced by Thomas Kautzor in the linked article).

Edited by EddieB
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This is the third post about Locomotives and Rolling Stock on the network of lines in Uganda and Kenya.

 

https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2018/06/26/uganda-railways-part-25-locomotives-and-rolling-stock-part-c-steam-1948-to-1977

 

The network continued to make use of the best of the locomotives purchased by both the Uganda Railway and the Kenya Uganda Railways and Harbours Corporation. The EAR&H renumbered all of the older locomotives into a consistent numbering system. The first two digits of four referred to the class of locomotive and the second two digits to the number in the class. Before we move on to the new purchases, here are a few images of the older locomotives on the system, further information about these classes can be found in the previous posts in this series.

 

Very sadly, so very few of these locomotives have survived in any form, let alone in a condition to continue to run on the network.

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The East African Railways and Harbours Corporation began to look at replacing its steam locomotives with more modern power units. This next post is part of that story.
 
 

It is impossible to exaggerate the tractive effort required from the motive power on the line through Kenya and Uganda. In the UK we make a great deal of fuss over the strain placed on standard-gauge locomotives on the West Coast Mainline. Shap, Beattock and Drumuachdar are significant climbs which taxed the most powerful of locomotives. The gradients and the heights which the East African lines surmounted dwarf that UK mainline. These feats of endurance and the relative power of the locomotives required to achieve them on narrow-gauge lines is astounding.
img_20180627_213806_115.jpg
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Two posts remain to complete the story of the line. This is the first of these. It brings the story of the line up to date (to 2018).
 
 

In 1977 the East African Railways Corporation (EARC), formerly the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation (EAR&H) was broken up. The three countries which made up the East African Community were unable to agree about many things and it became necessary for them to go their own ways. Three railway companies were formed: Kenya Railways Corporation; Uganda Railways Corporation; and Tanzania Railways Corporation. In this post we will focus on the first two of these and on later arrangements with Rift Valley Railways which ended in 2017 when the two Corporations were reformed. At the end of the post, which is essentially about narrow-gauge railways we will highlight developments relating to the new standard-gauge lines which may well dominate the future in Kenya and Uganda.
 
Very sadly, at least from a heritage perspective, the metre-gauge line and its trains have largely been replaced between Nairobi and Mombasa. No doubt the new trains are infinitely better. But their advent has brought to an end the real sense of adventure that travelling the metre-gauge line from Mombasa to Nairobi evoked!
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I anticipate that this is the final post in this series about Uganda Railway and its successors.  I trust that you have enjoyed these posts. If you have, then I have been posting about metre-gauge lines in France and you might wish to look at those posts in due course!
 
 

Metre-Gauge Railways in East Africa - Rolling Stock
 
This post provides a short survey of carriages, goods wagons and brake vans/cabooses on the network in Kenya and Uganda from the inception of the Uganda Railway in the 19th Century to through the demise of the East African Railways Corporation in 1977 on to 2018 when this post is being written. The approach is eclectic rather than structured and the post includes some interesting vehicles.
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I remember seeing some of those Mk.2 coaches being built at Derby on a visit in the '70s. I think they run on metre-guage versions of the B4 bogie, but obviously in the sidings at Derby they are on old BR1(standard gauge) accommodation bogies.

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Thank you for these postings Roger. This is a fascinating history of the EAR and constituents, with some interesting locomotives and steamships. The model railway you depicted was on the show circuit for some years. it may simply have been called Uganda Railway. Built in Gauge 1 on 32mm track.

 

Edit to include gauge details.

Edited by Ohmisterporter
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Over Christmas 2018, I have taken some time to look through older Railway Magazines which have been waiting for my attention for months. I have enjoyed looking at copies of The Railway Magazine from 1950 and found a complete copy of an article about the Kenya-Uganda Railway in the April 1950 edition of the magazine.

 

I thought the full article may be of interest here. Please follow this link:

 

https://rogerfarnworth.com/2018/12/28/uganda-railways-part-29-the-railway-magazine-1950-april-1950

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I have been enjoying Adrian Garner's book "Monorails of the 19th Century." I discovered that the first rail link between what was at the time Port Kampala and Kampala itself was a monorail!

 

Rolling stock was propelled along the line by bullocks rather than any form of mechanical propulsion.

 

The line was less than 8 miles long and lasted no more than a few years.

 

These are the details:

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2019/02/28/a-monorail-in-kampala

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It is a while since I completed this thread about The Uganda Railway. Or at least thought I had completed it. 

 

In the autumn of 2020, someone kindly pointed out that I had not referenced the official history of the line which was published in 1949.

 

At the end of 2020 I acquired copies of the 2 volume series compiled by M.F.Hill entitled 'Permanent Way'. These two books were produced for the East African Railways and Harbours, Nairobi, Kenya and, while being focussed on the Uganda Railway were as much a social and economic history of East Africa.

 

This link will take you to some preliminary reflections which come from reading Hill's book and which I hope are not seen as being too far off topic:

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/12/18/uganda-at-the-end-of-19th-century-and-the-events-leading-up-to-the-construction-of-the-uganda-railway

 

In order to provide the context for the construction of the Uganda Railway, M.F. Hill saw it as imperative in his book to provide a social and economic history of the East African region. It is impossible for me to judge the veracity of what he writes, but it clearly is written from a British Colonial perspective. In addition to covering the strife between the European powers who sought to increase their influence in the Great  Lakes region of the continent of Africa, Hill provides extensive quotes from leading British figures in the region about the Uganda that they knew before the coming of the railway.

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17 hours ago, rogerfarnworth said:

It is a while since I completed this thread about The Uganda Railway. Or at least thought I had completed it. 

 

In the autumn of 2020, someone kindly pointed out that I had not referenced the official history of the line which was published in 1949.

 

At the end of 2020 I acquired copies of the 2 volume series compiled by M.F.Hill entitled 'Permanent Way'. These two books were produced for the East African Railways and Harbours, Nairobi, Kenya and, while being focussed on the Uganda Railway were as much a social and economic history of East Africa.

 

This link will take you to some preliminary reflections which come from reading Hill's book and which I hope are not seen as being too far off topic:

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/12/18/uganda-at-the-end-of-19th-century-and-the-events-leading-up-to-the-construction-of-the-uganda-railway

 

 

 

A slightly obscure question sir.

 

Did the book(s) make any mention of what is pictured below? Said picture is a John Fowler & Co (Leeds) B5 traction engine, constructed for Uganda railways. I ask as the internet seems devoid of any information on it. There was also another engine, identical to this one, however it was armored for some reason. 
 

Douglas

 

4296E58D-1504-4BFF-B09A-7637139E36DC.jpeg

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 20/12/2020 at 15:18, Florence Locomotive Works said:

A slightly obscure question sir.

 

Did the book(s) make any mention of what is pictured below? Said picture is a John Fowler & Co (Leeds) B5 traction engine, constructed for Uganda railways. I ask as the internet seems devoid of any information on it. There was also another engine, identical to this one, however it was armored for some reason. 
 

Douglas

 

4296E58D-1504-4BFF-B09A-7637139E36DC.jpeg

Sorry, not seen anything of this as yet.!

 

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