Friends of the Rail Forum

EAST AFRICAN RAILWAYS & HARBOURS STAFF MAGAZINES

June 1952 to December 1958 (all in PDF format)

“Since a pointsman was taken by a lion at Malampaka, there was a general apathy on the part of pointsmen to walk out to the signals with the signal lamps.”

—Extract from the Tabora Traffic Inspector's Report for March 1953

Some nice stuff there!

I decided to have a look at the December 1954 edition (http://energeticproductions.com/EARandH/Vol0111.pdf), the closest I could find to my birthday as there is no issue for November 1954.

It includes an interesting discussion on the potential harmonisation of the railways throughout British colonial Africa. Although the track gauge is obviously the main difference, it also points out that couplers and brake systems would need to be changed. Loading gauge was not a problem as that was pretty consistent throughout the different colonies. It suggests that everything should be harmonised to match the Cape Gauge system, as there were about 25,000 miles of that compared to only 3,000 miles of metre gauge. This would include not only re-gauging, but also changing to knuckle-type couplers and air brakes.

One new thing I learned from this is that vacuum brakes could, apparently, work on the Kenya-Uganda railway. Initially air brakes were used as they were more effective at high altitudes. However this article suggests that recent developments in vacuum brakes now meant that they were effective at these altitudes, and some test trains had been run to demonstrate this.

Later in the magazine there is a colour photo of a train at Summit ("The highest point on British Colonial Railways") at 9,136 feet.

I have also been going through these.

Excellent stuff, but take forever here to download!

Worth it though - some good historical material there, as well as lots of humour!

Missing issues now filled in:

http://energeticproductions.com/EARandH/index.htm

Thanks John!