Constructed over a period of four years, at a cost of £5,200,000, a 208-mile metre gauge railway line, linking the seaport of Mombasa to the remote region of the Ruwenzori mountains is fully operational – Railways Africa Magazine 1957.
The extension of the East African Railways system from Kampala to Kasese has brought new promise of development to the wild, sparsely inhabited but potentially wealthy areas of Western Uganda. It enables the copper and cobalt mined at Kilembe to be transported directly to Mombasa.
When the first rails were laid at Mombasa 60 years ago, the projected line into East Africa was described in the House of Commons as a "gigantic folly." "The railway," said one speaker, "starts from nowhere and nobody wants to use it. It goes nowhere and nobody wants to come back by it..." But the railway was pushed west, and its progress has become part of the stirring story of East Africa. It reached the eastern shore of Lake Victoria in 1901 and in the 1920s crossed the Uasin Gishu into Uganda.
The line reached Kampala, commercial capital of Uganda, in 1931. There it stopped, although a number of surveys were made of a proposed line west to the Belgian Congo, described by Winston Churchill in 1906 as the "natural and logical conclusion to which our efforts must be directed".
No further construction was undertaken. But by 1950 a mining project in the Ruwenzori offered a new inducement to the line. It had been known since 1906 that copper deposits existed in the mountains and previous attempts had been made to work these deposits. Since 1947 Frobisher Ltd. of Toronto had been investigating the area and had discovered ore reserves totalling more than 14,000,000 tons.
In collaboration with the Rio Tinto Co. of London, the Colonial Development Corporation and the Uganda Development Corporation, Frobisher Ltd. formed the venture now known as Kilembe Mines Ltd. If rail transport to and from the area could be provided, it was possible that the mine could produce 20,000 to 25,000 tons of copper and 1,500 tons of cobalt a year and would also bring some 25,000 tons of imports a year into the area. Thus, sufficient freight was found to justify an extension to the west.
The Uganda Government decided to authorize the construction of the first 45 miles of the line from Kampala to Mityana based largely on a survey carried out in 1930-31. In the meantime, the East African Railways Administration surveyed the route beyond and by March 1951 the survey party had returned to Kampala to complete all the calculations required for the report and estimates. These were ready by April 1951.
Ten Years Guarantee
To their report on the technical aspect of the line’s construction was added the report "The Way to the West" prepared by a three-man committee appointed by the Uganda Government. Basing its calculations on the traffic actually available, except in the case of the Kilembe Mine, the committee forecast that the line would pay from the start. Their report enabled the Uganda Government to approve the extension and make a financial guarantee to the East African Railways for ten years against loss in respect of the operation of the extension. It also made an advance of £3,250,000 to begin construction.
This started at Kampala and at various points between there and Mityana early in 1952, and the first 45-mile section was opened to traffic in August 1953.
The next section of 37 miles to Musozi was opened to traffic under construction conditions a year later, and in February 1955 the line as far as Nkonge was opened to public traffic. A year later the railhead reached Kasese, 1,080 miles from Mombasa and the railhead for nearby Kilembe Mine. In August 1956, the whole line was opened for public traffic.
Through the Jungle
The route of the railway extends 208 miles in length and, except for its descent down the Lake George escarpment, follows in general a series of papyrus-filled river valleys.
Throughout the first 150 miles, the main characteristics of the country traversed are bush, forest, elephant grass and papyrus swamps. The route then enters the broken hilly country in the faulted region on the east side of the escarpment overlooking Lake George and the Ruwenzori.
The route descends some 1,200 feet down the steep sides of the escarpment onto the vast swampy plain north of Lake George.
From the west edge of the swamp to Kasese, the route traverses the same type of country as that encountered over much of the overall route with a preponderance of papyrus swamp interspersed with forest, bush and elephant grass.
Although Kasese is the present terminus, routes have been surveyed to Lakes Edward and George and to the Belgian Congo border.
The standards adopted for the railway are those applicable to the East African Railways and Harbours main lines and comprise maximum gradients of 1.5 per cent against UP traffic, 1.18 per cent against DOWN traffic and curves with a maximum curvature of 8°. In two instances it was necessary to adopt 10° curves in order to achieve an economic and satisfactory alignment in two sections of the route, the most notable being the Lake George Escarpment.
Constructional Plan
The constructional plan provided for simultaneous working in various sections in order to enable the laying of rails to proceed without interruption. At the same time bridges, water supply installations and buildings were put in hand in such a sequence as to enable sections to be complete in all respects as the rail head moved forward. By this means it was possible to progressively open the line to traffic very closely behind the rail head as it moved forward.
The construction of the banks and cuttings for the railway necessitated the blasting and removal of nearly twenty-two and a half million cubic feet of rock, a gross weight of almost six hundred and fifty thousand tons, and six times this quantity of earth had to be excavated. Banks reached a height of one hundred and twenty feet, and the largest cutting is some eighty-five feet in depth. A particularly interesting feature is a spiral on the Lake George escarpment found necessary in order to achieve the descent to the lake swamp.
The four-mile crossing of the Lake George swamp involved the building of an earth causeway containing twelve million cubic feet of earth, all of which had to be obtained from firm ground at either edge of the swamp.
At the height of the work, as many as 60 tractors and scrapers, eight excavators, 12 narrow gauge locomotives and 300 narrow gauge wagons with 15 miles of track, and up to six construction trains were engaged preparing the banks and cuttings for the railway.
For the crossing of the many rivers and streams encountered between Kampala and Kasese, 19 bridges varying in span from 20 to 120 feet were required and a 60-foot span bridge was installed where the railway crosses over itself in the spiral on the Lake George Escarpment.
For crossing smaller rivers and in positions where steel bridges could not be built, nine concrete culverts were constructed.
In addition to bridges, nearly ten miles of concrete pipes varying in size from 18 inches to three feet in diameter have been installed to ensure proper drainage of the track.
Permanent Way
Rails laid for the track weigh fifty pounds per yard and are second-hand, recovered from relaying operations on other parts of the system. Sleepers are of steel and are fixed to the rails by means of keys or clips.
In the construction of the line, nearly two hundred and sixteen and a half miles of track and a hundred sets of points and crossings have been laid. Engineering trains employed on this work and the conveyance of rails and sleepers to the laying sites totalled nearly one thousand five hundred train days.
Water supply units have been established at approximately 35-mile intervals throughout the route for watering locomotives and meeting the needs of the railway staff. Where possible rivers have been used as sources of supply, but in several instances, it has been necessary to resort to boreholes.
The work was done under the supervision of the Chief Engineer of the East African Railways and Harbours Administration and executed both departmentally and by contract under his direct control.
