Author: Andrew Grantham

King of Afghanistan’s visit to Swindon works

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

The Railway Magazine of May 1928 (p410) has photo of the “Time-table of Royal Train in English and Persian” for the King of Afghanistan’s visit to Swindon works, G.W.R. On March 21.

railway_magazine_may_1928.jpg

GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY
TIMETABLE
for
The Journey of Their Majesties the
King and Queen of Afghanistan
From Paddington to Swindon
On Wednesday, March 21st, 1928.

More details of King Amanullah’s tour of Europe, with some wonderfully fawning quotes from Railway Gazette. On his peregrinations he also visited Berlin in March 1928, where he went for short ride on – and was allegedly invited to drive – one if the then-new A2 small-profile U-bahn trains, leading to the type becoming known as the “Amanullah-Wagen”.

The March 2008 issue of Majesty magazine has an article: Roaring Twenties: A compelling account of the King and Queen of Afghanistan’s state visit to Britain, by Russell Harris. When I get chance to pop into one of WH Smith’s public reading rooms I’ll see if there is any railway content.

More industrial diesels supplied to Afghanistan

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

Records of more locos delivered to Afghanistan have been found by Simon Darvill.

These are two 600mm Deutz OMZ117 F 4wDM locos built in 1938 (w/ns 22732 & 3). They left Deutz on 25/2/1938 and were delivered to “Regierungseinkaufsstelle von Afghanistan, Berlin, für Karachi”. I believe that this translates as Government Purchase Place of Afghanistan – I am showing them as delivered to the Afghanistan Government. I assume that the Karachi reference is where they were shipped to and then were collected by whoever the end user was. Interestingly they were still working in 1954 as Deutz delivered two new A2L514 engines for them in that year. I have no idea the moment what they were used for but it is interesting that all industrial locos supplied to Afghanistan appear to be of the same gauge.

Towraghondi railway in action

Posted on by Andrew Grantham


Yard Engine

Originally uploaded by holdemhill

At last – photos of the railway at Towraghondi, Afghanistan’s border crossing with Turkmenistan. Donald Hill has various pictures of the terminal, including two shots of a Turkmenistan railway locomotive on 28 November 2007.

It is a 2TE10L twin-section loco, number 2086 (or is that just one half of it?). The loco is not a thing of beauty, but it is real rail action in Afghanistan.

Iran – Herat railway project

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

“Construction of a 191 km railway from Iran to Herat in Afghanistan, with the prospect of an extension across Afghan territory to Sher Khan Bandar, promises to stimulate trade with Central Asia.” reports Murray Hughes in the January 2008 issue of Railway Gazette International.

The current scheme was launched when a Memorandum of Understanding was signed in June 2002 between the Iranian Transport Ministry and the Ministry of Public Utility in Kabul. The project was costed at US$28m and construction was split into four lots, two in Iran, and two in Afghanistan; work officially began in Iran on July 29 2006.
…
It is from the penultimate loop at Khaf that the single-track line to Herat begins.

From Khaf the route heads slightly south and then east across the border through arid and rugged terrain. Total length of the new line is 191 km, of which 77 km is located in Iran and 114 km in Afghanistan. Of the 10 intermediate stations envisaged, Ghurian will be the largest intermediate town served by the section on Afghan territory.

…

Preliminary investigations have been made for an extension from Herat that would run for no less than 700 km across northwestern Afghanistan to Meymaneh, Sheberghan and Sher Khan Bandar on the border with Tadzhikistan. This route would also offer the opportunity to connect with the 1 524 mm gauge line that crosses the Uzbekistan frontier near Termez, penetrating as far as Hariatan. This line is now handling trains nearly every day, mainly carrying petroleum products, machinery, building materials and agricultural produce.

You can read the full article on the Railway Gazette International website.

Afghan locos found in works list

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

Simon Darvill has found some records of more industrial locomotives which were supplied to Afghanistan!

He is currently going through the works lists for German loco builders as part of some work for the Industrial Railway Society on industrial railways of Benelux, and found the Afghan machines in a Ruhrthaler works list.

German company Ruhrthaler Maschinenfabrik built four 600 mm gauge 4wDM locos, works numbers 3787-90/1964. According to Ruhrthaler’s works list they were delivered to “Working Group Mahipar”.

Simon’s theory is that they were supplied in conjunction with the constuction of the Mahipar power station, a hydro-electric power station on the Kabul River 40 km downstream from Kabul. The dates support this, as the locos were supplied to Hochtief, dispatched on 31 July 1964 and the power station opened in 1966.

Dr Paul E Waters’s 2002 book Afghanistan: A Railway History says (unfortunately without a reference):

On 15 March 1969 Wilfrid Simms noted four B-B diesel-hydraulic locomotives in a compound at the head of the Tang-i-Jharoo or Afghan Pass on the road from Kabul towards the Khyber Pass. They were numbered TIJ 1 to 4, were of about 60 cm gauge and appeared to be of East German or other Soviet Block origin. They had presumably been used on recently completed road improvements, whch included several tunnels. Armed guards inhibited attempts at close inspection or photography.

Could these be the same locos – actually West German and for a hydroelectric project? I’ve not pinned down the location of Tang-i-Jharoo on a map yet. Anyone know where it is?

Ruhrthaler background

Ruhrthaler Maschinenfabrik is now part of Bräutigam, who describe Ruhrthaler as follows:

In order to further strengthen our market position, we acquired the RUHRTHALER machine works in 1996. A prestigious company that established itself worldwide as a designer and manufacturer of locomotives and as the market leader in mining locomotives and monorail systems over the course of its 100-year history. From 1924 on, they supplied local and foreign sources with more than 4500 diesel locomotives.

Power station background

A PDF with details of the Mahipar & Sarobi Hydropower Plants:

The run-of-river hydroelectric power plant Mahipar is located on the Kabul river about 40 km downstream of the capital Kabul. The hydropower scheme was completed and the first two units commissioned in 1966 to provide mid and peak load electrical power to the grid for supplying the city of Kabul. A third unit was installed some years later.

The Afghan Energy Information Center has some more information.

Iran’s Torbat-e Heydariyeh to Khaf (and one day Herat) line on TV

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

YouTube has this video from 1 March 2007, “3 TV News Reports on New Iran Railroad to Afghanistan”, about the opening of the Torbat-e Heydariyeh – Khaf railway within Iran, and a 200 km extension now under construction towards Herat in Afghanistan.

For those of us who don’t speak Persian(?), there is a translation here. Mr Mohammadizadeh, governor-general of the Province of Khorasan-e Razavi, says:

Construction work began on this railroad in the year 2002. It is 148 kilometers long. It has eight stations and cost about 50 billion tomans, fortunately it went into operation today [1 March 2007].

The primary objective in creating this line is to haul iron ore, with an annual load of about .52 million tons.

…

More important is that the vital artery for the economic development of our nation with the friend and brother nation of Afghanistan will travel by way of this very railroad.

About 6 months ago inside Afghanistan the ground was broken for the Afghanistan railroad by our president of the republic’s first vice-president and today also the ground was broken for the line from Sangan to Harat inside Afghanistan.

The credits for ths project have been procured, and for the first time the culture of the railroad is coming into the friend and brother nation of Afghanistan and the nation of Afghanistan will have a train and a railroad.

It appears that the conditions that exist in Afghanistan in terms of reconstruction and the needed goods in the outside world, this railroad can be effective achieving economic development and the social welfare of the people of Afghanistan.

It can therefore be said in short that this project has great importance for the iron ore of Khaf, for the use of the people in several cities along the route and especially for establishing a railroad for government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the people of Afghanistan.
…

The line that goes into operation today is 148 kilometers long, but the work is beginning on a line into Afghanistan with about 50 kilometers inside our country and about 150 kilometers inside Afghanistan. This year about 45 billion tomans have been allocated for the new line, and we are hoping that this task will be completed in the year 2007.