UGANDA WELCOMES THREE NEW LOCOMOTIVES AT KAMPALA RAILWAY STATION
(Posted 21ST October 2014)
Uganda’s State Minister for Works, Hon. John Byabagambi, joined by other officials from his ministry, were at hand at the Kampala Railway Station yesterday morning to welcome the first three of overall 20 American built General Electric locomotives Rift Valley Railways.
Invited guests were welcomed by the top echelon of RVR’s management and members of the board of directors and had ample time before the function started to use the opportunity to see the railway station, which in its heydays saw daily passenger trains operate from Kampala to Nairobi and on to Mombasa, besides multiple freight trains.
While clearly the emphasis of the concessionaire RVR, which holds the license to operate the narrow gauge railway systems of Kenya and Uganda, is on cargo operations – the company presently only runs three passenger trains a week between Nairobi and Mombasa, compared to twice daily trains in the old days – has a return to passenger operations not been ruled out. In Kampala are negotiations going on between RVR, the Ugandan government and the Kampala Capital City Authority for the launch of passenger commuter trains, which would breathe fresh life into the railway station which otherwise appears quite dormant.
What was formerly known as the Uganda Railways, with works starting in 1899 from Mombasa to connect the port with what was then Port Florence (today Kisumu), and by rail ferry across Lake Victoria to Port Bell, Kampala’s lake port, after independence was split into Kenya Railways and Uganda Railways but then again came together under the East African Railway and Harbours Authority when the first East African Community was launched. Back then the most important mode of passenger and cargo transport, did the railway slowly lose in importance and through the 1980’s and 1990’s went into a decline, before Rift Valley Railways secured the concession and, after a rocky start due to shareholder wrangles, began to embark on major upgrades along the railway line. Refurbishment and new acquisitions of rolling stock followed and are ongoing and, as reported here in the past, were major system innovations introduced from automated cargo and train monitoring to a more recent simulator training unit for new train drivers. It was in fact announced yesterday that a cargo train journey from Mombasa to Kampala, which not long ago took nearly three weeks to complete, has now reduced to just under three days and as further line rehabilitation is ongoing and new stronger locomotives are imported, is it foreseen that the journey time will reduce to under two days.
Meanwhile have tourism stakeholders been waiting for periodic, if not regular special trains which can be marketed to a growing international segment of tourists wanting to travel the classic train routes around the world. The ‘Lunatic Express, aka Iron Snake’ from Mombasa to Nairobi traverses the Tsavo National Park before making its way into the Great African Rift Valley enroute from Nairobi to the Ugandan border at Tororo. Inside Uganda the scenic route continues with the crossing of the River Nile in Jinja again a major highlight. Rift Valley Railways’ officials though were guarded when discussing such plans though not ruling out such ventures, possibly in partnership with a tourism partner.
With the planned new Standard Gauge Railway still many years away, and notably not a word being said about the crucial link route from Nairobi to the Ugandan border – only the stretch from Mombasa to Nairobi has been formally contracted until now – will the existing narrow gauge railway operated by RVR for years to come be THE railway connecting Kenya and Uganda. After the recent re-opening of the branch line to Gulu and Pakwach, one of the pictures shown above refers, is the task still waiting to revive the branch route from Kampala to Kasese, which however is not part of the RVR concession and has therefore not received any attention and fallen into disrepair since traffic on this route was halted in the 1990’s.
