History

Lenz railway study in 1928-29

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

The Stichting Samenwerking Afghanistan – Nederland website has some information about the 1920s plan for a rail network in Afghanistan.

Here is an attempt at translating the relevant bit, via Google Translate with some hand-editing.

King Amanullah gave German architects permission to build the new royal palaces, a number of factories and a small railway in Kabul. Later in 1928 the king asked a German railway commission headed by Berlin company Allgemeine Baugesellschaft Lenz & Co to lay a railway between Kabul, British India, Iran and the Soviet Union. This company sent Dutch engineer Adrianus van Lutsenburg Maas to Afghanistan in 1928 for construction of the railway.

Adrianus van Lutsenburg Maas worked in Afghanistan between 1928-29 as an engineer with the German company. The project failed owing to a nationwide revolt, and van Lutsenburg left Afghanistan in 1929. While in Afghanistan he kept diaries, wrote letters and took photographs of everything.

Source: Geschiedenis, Stichting Samenwerking Afghanistan – Nederland

The article (in Dutch) also has some modern photos of the locomotives at the museum in Kabul.

Presumably this listing at The Genealogy Page of Jorge Heredia and Heleen Sittig at Rootsweb is the man in question: Engineer, born 20 Dec 1893, Dantumadeel, died 10 Apr 1979, Den Haag. His material appears to be in the Netherlands’ Nationaal Archief.

Accident on the Darulaman railway

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

Telegrams in Brief.

The only railway in Afghanistan, the narrow-gauge line between Kabul and Dar ul Aman, the new city built two years ago by King Amanullah, had its first serious accident last week, when an engine overturned, killing one man and injuring two. Its driver, a Peshawari Pathan, escaped.
The Times, 19 June 1928, p15 (Issue 44923, col G)

Kabul to Darulaman railway in 1930

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

“Train en afghanistan 1930” is a photograph of the Kabul to Darulaman railway, scanned from French magazine Sciences et Voyages No. 533 of 3 April 1930 by “Jean-Pierre 60”.


Photo of Kabul to Darulaman railway train

The original caption says Il existe, en Afghanistan, quelques kilomètres de voies ferrées. La photographie represente une station de chemin de fer [There are, in Afghanistan, a few kilometres of railway. The photograph shows a railway station].

The locomotive has a headlight, which doesn’t appear on earlier pictures.

Steam loco at the National Museum of Afghanistan

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

The Museum And The Palace at the From UBC to Kabul blog by Brian Platt has some photographs of the Kabul museum and its plinthed Henschel steam locomotive which were taken on 30 October 2010. One of the locos with a collapsed cab is also visible in one of the shots.

After wondering around inside for a while, I explored the outside yard of the museum. The most interesting piece was this, the rusted-out body of a steam engine. It’s from the 1920s when Amanullah, the leader of Afghanistan from 1919 to 1929, worked his ass off to modernize the country.
…
However, Amanullah’s policies were attacked viciously by various conservative factions in Afghanistan, and eventually he was forced into exile in Europe. All that’s left of his grand train visions are sitting on the lawn of the National Museum.
Source: From UBC to Kabul, 2010-11-03

Construction of the Friendship Bridge

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

Just south of Termez, at Heratan, on the Amu Darya river, diplomats understand that a reinforced steel bridge is being constructed. The aim, it would seem, is to improve the roads and garrison facilities right from the Soviet border to Kabul

Russians switch to commando-type raids in Afghanistan, Karan Thapar, The Times, 19 September 1980, p1 and p6 (Issue 60728; col C)

Narrow gauge railways in Tajikistan

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

“Narrow gauge railway Dushanbe – Kurgan-Tube – Kulyab, Nizhniy Panj” – in Russian, but Google Translate works pretty well.

The 750 mm gauge railway network in the southwest of Tajikistan was started in 1929. Originally there were two unrelated lines: Kurgan-Tube – Nizhniy Panj…

Nizhniy Panj is on north side of the river which forms the border with Afghanistan. The railway closed in the 1990s, but there is some talk of building a new line in the area with a bridge to Afghanistan and onward connections to Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and beyond.

There is also a link to a general history of railways in Tajikistan (in Russian).

“How my grandma saw King Amanullah”

Posted on by Andrew Grantham

In the third and final part of a little series, Thomas Ruttig takes you on a journey in G.H. Wells’ time machine, back to Berlin in the year 1928 when Afghan King Amanullah visited the German capital as first head of state after the end of Kaiser Wilhelm’s monarchy. Read how the King drove the Berlin ‘tube’, what he got as a present of honour and how the Berliners made ‘Ullemulle’ – and I am sure this nickname was meant to be friendly – their King of Hearts.
Source: Afghan Encounters in Europe or: How My Grandma Saw King Amanullah