Archive for the ‘External Links’ Category
Sunday, August 28th, 2011
The Transportation Consulting Ltd is a newly established consulting company that specializes in provision of professional financial and engineering consulting services in the sphere of railway sector in the Republics of Central Asia. The company reflects a well matched alliance of American and Uzbek partners who have a sober ambition to participate in railway sector development in the region.
In particular, the company has a vast interest in challenging growth of goods hauled into Afghanistan as well as augmentation of existing railway logistics systems of Uzbekistan and its transit potential.
Source: Transportation Consulting
The company has addresses in New Jersey and Tashkent. Their website has a gallery of photos of construction works on the Hairatan to Mazar-i-Sharif railway project, including something which looks rather like a passenger halt.
Tags: Hayratan, Transportation Consulting, Uzbekistan
Posted in Afghanistan's railways, External Links, Projects | No Comments »
Sunday, July 17th, 2011
The Royal Geographical Society Picture Library has a photograph showing Railway & telegraph plant for Kandahar / Defence tower & barracks for troops / Railway terminus at Charman, taken by AC Yate in 1896.
The preview is a bit too small to see very much, but it might show the railway stores which were allegedly in place ready for rapid construction of a line across the border from British India to Kandahar in the event that Imperial Russia made a move on Herat.
There is also a view of the Railway station at Chaman: tug of war – Pathan v Punjabi Mohammedan (2nd) Baluchis in Pakistan, also by AC Yate and dated 1896-97.
Presumably the photographer is the Captain AC Yate who wrote The Transcaspian Railway and the Power of the Russians to Occupy Herat in 1891, arguing for building a railway to Sistan (the Afghanistan/Iran/Pakistan border area), rather than Kandahar: The press and the public are at this moment advocating the extension of our railways to Kandahar; but that this could be done without precipitating a rupture of our relations with the Amir is doubtful
.
The RGS has various other interesting photos – a search for railway brings up shots of colonial (and other) lines, and there are views of the Bolan Pass line.
Tags: Chaman, Great Game, Kandahar, RGS
Posted in Afghanistan's railways, External Links, Photographs | No Comments »
Sunday, July 10th, 2011
“View Of The Khyber Pass From Shagai Fort”, a photograph by Private J W Linley of 2nd Battalion the Northamptonshire Regiment, uploaded to Flickr by Northampton Museums Service. There is a bit of railway in the bottom right corner.
There are also other interesting pictures on the Northampton Museums Service’s Flickr collection.
Tags: Khyber Pass
Posted in External Links, Photographs | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
An interesting NBC article from 2009 discussing China’s involvement in Afghanistan, and the Aynak copper mine in particular.
In addition to setting up the copper production infrastructure, which includes a smelter, power generation station, coal mine and groundwater system, the Chinese joint venture is also building roads, Afghanistan’s first national railway, new homes for villagers who will be resettled from the immediate area of the mine, hospitals and schools.
Source: Resource-hungry China heads to Afghanistan, Adrienne Mong, NBC News, 2009-10-14
Tags: Aynak, China, copper mine, NBC
Posted in Afghanistan's railways, External Links, Projects | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
Afghanistan’s Minister for Mines, Wahidullah Shahrani, speaks to India’s Business Standard about tendering of the Hajigak iron ore mine project, which includes an integrated steel plant that will consume high-grade coking coal from nearby deposits; a road or rail evacuation route
.
[...]
China, which was awarded the Aynak copper mines in Loghar province, Afghanistan’s first big sale of mining rights in the post-Taliban era, has undertaken to build a railway line from the northern provinces, to Bamiyan (where Hajigak is located), to Kabul, and then to Torkham on the Pakistan border at the Khyber Pass.
Shahrani believes that a viable alternative that could form the Hajigak evacuation infrastructure would be a railway line running westwards to Iran, along the Zaranj-Delaram highway that India had built in the mid-2000s, to the Iranian port of Chabahar.
Source: New Afghanistan mining projects create opportunity for India, Ajai Shukla, Business Standard, 2011-06-07
Tags: Business Standard, Hajigak, India, Iran, iron ore
Posted in Afghanistan's railways, External Links, Projects | No Comments »
Monday, June 20th, 2011
Regional Cooperation
The EU is increasing its work on regional cooperation, with a particular focus on Central Asia. We are currently supporting customs and border management, the Centre for Regional Cooperation within the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs which follows up on Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA) as well as regional economic cooperation issues, including the establishment of a Secretariat for Railway Development. A €22 million programme was committed for this purpose in 2010.
Source: Commissioner Piebalgs visits Afghanistan: Examples of EU aid to Afghanistan, Europa.eu, 2001-06-19
Get your open-access bids in now…
Tags: EU
Posted in Afghanistan's railways, External Links | No Comments »
Sunday, June 19th, 2011
…the British Indian government had just started making inroads to the Khyber Agency by extending it’s railway beyond Jamrud.
The Peshawar – Jamrud railway had already been constructed on which the “Flying Afridi” train service would make a trip once a day. This train service, part of the greater Kabul River Railway or the Loye Shilman railway project, was to be extended much deeper into the Khyber Agency. The initial survey by Captain Macdonald was to follow the upstream right banks of the River Kabul along the Loye Shilman territory till the village of Palosi on the Afghan border. Although less challenging, this route was scrapped due to political issues of the time with the then Amir of Afghanistan, Amir Habibullah Khan and also probably due to the sheer number of bends in the River along the route.
Source: The Frontier Clasp and its Railways, Omar Usman, Khyber.org, 2011-03-14
There is a map which shows the Kabul River railway.
Tags: Kabul River, Khyber Pass
Posted in External Links, History, Maps | No Comments »
