Afghan railroads, past, present and future
On Flickr is a wonderful collection of photographs of Landi Kotal and the Khyber Pass in 1937, taken (or collected?) by Albert Chalcroft of The King’s Regiment.
These are some of the railway ones (click to enlarge and visit on Flickr):
I think this is my favourite:
Hairatan Port : Naweed Fardeen Group of companies has his own Train line and port at Hairatan near Uzbekistan border for the purpose of have effectiveness effeciency in the busines for its customers.
There are some photos of the railway line on the website of Naweed Fardeen Group, who in addition to transport and freight forwarding, can supply you with containers, electrical goods, precious stones and carpets. The pictures include a shot of locomotive TEM2-3315
The Brentwood Gazette interviews British railway consultant David Brice:
“David Binderbrice, 79, has visited Afghanistan a dozen times since 2007, helping the authorities in the war-torn country to design more than 2,000 kilometres of new tracks in the process.”
Source: Meet the brains behind rail route from China to Europe, Matt Reason, Brentwood Gazette, 24 June 2013
Johannes Heger from Austria has completely updated his unofficial Iranian Railways website, which was at www.msedv.com/rai but is now at www.iranrail.net.
There is information about passenger travel, and lots of good links.
The Asian Development Bank has uploaded some photos of the Hairatan – Mazar-i-Sharif railway to Flickr today.
Unfortunately ABD seems to have turned off the ability to embed the photos on external websites, so to see them try this link: ADB’s Afghanistan photo set and click around the lninks to railway, railroad etc.
The photos include construction work underwayfor the Mazar-i-Sharif line, freight wagons being unloaded, the Afghan deputy minister of city rehabilitation posing in front of a TEM2 in Mazar-i-Sharif in June 2012 (text says 6 June, metadata says 7 June), and a passenger train(! possibly carrying the minister?) with TEM2-6561 hauling an Uzbek Railways liveried coach.
There are lots of other interesting photos of railway projects in Asia.
Some pictures off t’interwebs.
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2-8-2 tank locomotive for the Bolan Pass, North Western Railway of India, from the Boys’ Book of Locomotives by JR Howden, 1907. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain).
Details and picture of a GA/S Class 2-6-2+2-6-2 Garratt.
More on Bolan Pass steam operations.
This is a fascinating if somewhat depressing read: The New Silk Road and the Northern Distribution Network: A Golden Road to Central Asian Trade Reform?
The New Silk Road and the Northern Distribution Network is a constructive assessment of the conditions and challenges facing this effort that asks and answers the following questions:
- Is the Northern Distribution network incentivizing regional cooperation and border reforms?
- Is the Northern Distribution Network helping to fight corruption in Central Asia?
- Has the Northern Distribution Network made transhipment through Central Asia more efficient?
- Are ordinary Central Asian citizens benefitting from Northern Distribution Network trade?
I suspect you can guess the answers… you know what they say about the answer to a headline phrased as a question always being “no”?
The New Silk Road: Where Will It Lead is an interview with the author, Graham Lee. The report itself has lots of numbers for freight transport volumes and costs, which might be of interest to some readers.
In summary, the money being spend on the Northern Distribution Network is all disappearing into a pit of corruption, with lots of people on the take.
The report suggests that the various state railways are doing nicely out of the NDN traffic. I guess that if the freight needs to be moved, railways are more efficient in technical terms. But where is all the money they are getting going – funding strategic infrastructure investments and shiny new trains, disappearing off into general government funds, or into someone’s back pocket?
Photos from an online album by retired Pakistani railwayman Kiskhan: “I joined the Pakistan Railway as a junior officer way back in 1968. I rose to become its General Manager and CEO in Jan. 2000 and finally retired in Jun. 2003 at the age of 60.”
The Khyber Pass line. Note the umbrella, and “Coupling to Khyber Pass” headboard:
The Pakistan side of the Afghan border at Chaman in 2003:
Railway to change fate of Afghanistan, by Farhad Naibkhel in the Afghanistan Times. With a photo of locomotive TEM2 6561 and a passenger coach.
Some RIA Novosti photos: