KENYA-UGANDA RAILWAY

The Kenya-Uganda railway is one of the most popular railway lines in Africa. The railway construction began in 1896 at the Port of Mombasa. The construction work was mainly done by the African and Asian, specifically Indians laborers. The construction work encountered a number of challenges with the Man-Eater lions of the Tsavo the most popular.
These lions were called Man-eater because of their frequent attacks on the construction workers. They killed a number of workers and held the construction work up for several months. The working conditions were also not very conducive and many laborers died because of diseases and attacks by wild animals.
The man-eater lions were hunted down and killed by J.H. Patterson who was supervising the construction of a bridge to cross the railway line over Tsavo River. This was not the last time the construction work was to be hampered by lions as scores of other people were also killed by lions as the construction work continued, among the Police Superintendent Ryall who was killed at Kima Police Station.
The Line reached Nyrobi (maasai name for "a place of cool waters") in 1899. This was to be made the administrative centre mainly because of its cool weather and centrality. In 1900 the name was changed to Nairobi which is currently the capital city of Kenya.
The constructors were to encounter another obstacle in the Rift Valley because of a sharp descent of 450 metres from the escarpment to the floor of the Rift Valley.
The engineers overcame this by building an inclined railway with the sharpest incline being at gradient of 50 degrees for 210 metres.
The line finally reached Lake Victoria in 1901 and the construction of a 930 km landmark was complete for the first phase. The construction of the railway line was continued later after the first world war to Kampala where it reached in the year 1931.

The railway line opened up East Africa to the rest of the world and ensured that the agricultural produce for the rich Kenyan Highlands and Uganda were transported for exportation.

However, ever since the original line was constructed, it has been neglected a lot and the trains that serve the line are still the old locomotives which are very slow and therefore nonviable for the needs of the East African economy at the moment.

Let us now take a look at some of the photos of this landmark as seen at the Nairobi station.

Passenger and luggage wagons

Tanker wagons that have been serving the line are just rusting

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A view of the railway lines at the Nairobi station. They have been constructed at the range of 1 metre.