I’ve just been re-reading a fascinating book I found whilst browsing dusty shelves in a bookshop in Rawalpindi when I was last in Pakistan (1997). It is called “Adventure Through Khyber” by Victor Bayley … His task: to design and supervise the construction of a railway through the Khyber Pass, a railway which would eventually link far off Bombay to the Afghanistan Border at Landi Khana.
Archive for the ‘External Links’ Category
“The tribes were very restive and hostile”
Sunday, February 28th, 2010Summer Holiday
Sunday, February 14th, 2010A 1978 tale of travelling through Afghanistan - and a coup - on a British 1954 Bristol Lodekka bus…!
Phew, that was close.
For bus anoraks, “Grunt” was Bristol Omnibus LD6B registration number YHT940, scrapped 1989/90. Apparently.
Russian discussion
Sunday, February 7th, 2010Russian language-discussion of Afghan railways, via Google Translate
It looks like I need to find a copy of the book Выполняя Интернациональный Долг (and learn Russian).
Yes, the branch Kushka-Toragundi there a long time. I have personally seen covered freight wagons in the WCD Toragundi, when he served in Afghanistan, in 1986 and I have a small book (authorship, not mine) “In carrying out international duty”, where this branch is a little described. There an interview with a citizen of Afghanistan, a switchman employed on this road. There is in this book and excellent photo (h / b) TEM-2 diesel locomotive with a banner “Friendship with the Soviet and the Afghan people can not be undermined!
Павел Егерев 17.08.2009 01:31
Also a Ferghana article dated 4 December 2009 Why does Afghanistan need railroad?, looking at the background to the Uzbek - Afghan rail link.
Kandahar railway on War Office map
Sunday, December 27th, 2009www.angloafghanwar.info is an online resource for anyone interested in knowing more about the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-1880. It is also the home of the Second Afghan War database project, a collection of names, family histories and stories concerning those who participated in this lesser-known campaign from the days Queen Victoria’s British Empire.
The website has this 1895 War Office map, which, interestingly, shows the never-built railway from the Indian (now Pakistani) border at Chaman to Kandahar.
British reconnaissance parties looking for a route for the proposed railway had reached Kandahar by December 1879, but they were in enemy country and so it was difficult to identify an optimal route. The British authorities realised it would not be possible for the railway to reach even as far as Quetta before the end of the war, and so the work was given a lower priority. When a new cabinet was formed under Gladstone in April 1880 they put the planned extension to Kandahar on hold.
Pakistan Railways still runs to Chaman, and plans for an extension as far as Spin Boldak resurface every so often - it even appears on some more recent maps, though it has never existed.
Are you there Moriarty?
And finally… while Sherlock Holmes’s sidekick Dr Watson may not really have been in the Second Afghan War, it seems a Moriarty was…
Afghan fruit by rail
Sunday, December 20th, 2009An article on the rail transport of Afghan fruit to markets in India.
Fresh Fruits from Afghanistan to India!
I fondly remember as a youngster - in late 1940’s and as late as early 50’s - the repeated shouts of burly, awesome Pathan vendors in our ‘mohalla’ in Lucknow: “Fresh luscious grapes from Chaman; red juicy pomegranates from Kandahar; “Buy them now, eat them now, lest you repent!”
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But whatever the virtues of the vendors, their assertion about the quality of their products was never in doubt. So with this childhood experience when I read the following lines in P.S.A Berridge’s old classic, “Couplings to the Khyber: The Story of The North Western Railway” I became really nostalgic about the fruits which are certainly no more:
“Built primarily as a strategic line the Chaman Extension Railway served for many years hundreds of tons of luscious fruits — grapes, peaches, and nectarines in particular from Afghanistan found their way to the markets of far-away cities in India. Before 1947, in the summer months, there used to run every day a train with its ice-packaged refrigerator vans destined for places as far away as Calcutta and Madras.”
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Let me now construct this interesting rail transportation story which has a human angle too.Source: Arunachala Grace, Sacred Power Site of South India, 2009-10-18
Railways of the Raj
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009A website which might be in interest to readers of this site is Railways of the Raj
WELCOME TO THE RAILWAYS OF IMPERIAL INDIA
This website sets out to capture the flavour of the Railways of the Raj, that giant colossus set up and equipped by the British and founded on the power of steam. We take a look at impressions, reminiscences and memoirs, pictures, extracts from diaries, even that odd letter Aunt Jane wrote telling how she was stranded at Bombay Victoria Terminus station back in the twenties.
More
Bloomberg on Afghan railway project
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009Bloomberg quotes me in Afghanistan’s First Railroad Aims to Undercut Taliban, which looks at the issues around the project to extend the Hayratan railway to Mazar-i-Sharif.
Note there are actually three locomotives from the Kabul - Darulaman railway!
“Quite a sight to see a train in operation”
Thursday, July 30th, 2009A 12 October 2008 posting on Free Range International, a blog with some fascinating on-the-ground reports and thoughts from Afghanistan:
Two days ago, I traveled to Hairatan which is located approximately 65km north of Mazar-e-Sharif. It is also located on the Amu Darya river (formerly know as the Oxus River) which is the longest river in Central Asia. For someone like myself who has never operated any where else other than the southern or eastern parts of the country, it sure came across as a bit of a surprise.
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One of the most striking impressions that I got was seeing an operating freight rail system. After being to most corners of Afghanistan, and only witnessing ‘Jingle’ trucks and semi-trailers it was quite a sight to see a train in operation. The main purpose of the train is transporting fuel, which is imported from Uzbekistan.
Source: Free Range International
There are a couple of big pictures showing the Friendship Bridge and (presumably Uzbek Railways) locomotive TEM2-3315 in operation at Hayratan.
