The First Meeting of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation organisation’s Railway Working Group was held on Tokyo on 24-26 November 2015. The CAREC Railway Working Group was formed after the 14th CAREC Transport Sector Coordinating Committee Meeting which was held in Ulaanbaatar on 28-29 April 2015, and aims to guide the development of a short and medium-term railway strategy for the CAREC region.

The presentations from the meeting can be downloaded from the CAREC website, and have a lot of interesting information about railways in the CAREC member countries.

Day 1 featured a presentation on the Afghanistan National Railway Plan and Way Forward by Mohammad Yamma Shams, Director General & Chief Executive Officer of the Afghanistan Railway Authority. This sets out current thinking under AfRA’s Afghanistan National Railway Plan, and the status of the various proposals for a 5500 km network.