Khyber Railway: A Lost Opportunity?, asks Abdur Razzaq at PACT Radio on 4 August 2012.
External Links
Ambassador at Hairatan
Some 20 February 2010 photos of Hairatan at the website of Mohammad Sadiq, Ambassador of Pakistan to Afghanistan: Yes Afghanistan has railways-this one linked Heratan Port with the Soviet Union
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Herat railway opens this year?
This report (in Persian) appears to suggest that (tracklaying?) work is underway on the new railway from Iran to Herat, and it will open in the current (Iranian) year
The Fars News Agency reported on 27 May 2012 that Khaf-Herat Railway to Start Economic Revolution in Afghanistan. “[Iranian Consul-General Rahim Mohammad Yekta] stressed that the Khaf-Herat railway construction project will be implemented soon.”
Tashkent Transport blog
The Ташкентский транспорт blog has updates on trains, trams and buses in Tashkent. Worth a browse.
Soviet photos of the Hairatan rail link
Some Soviet photos of the Friendship Bridge and Hairatan, showing the railway.
Silk Road by rail
The Silk Road by train section section of the Caravanistan travel website has some practical information about passenger services on Central Asian railways, (including a page on Afghanistan which doesn’t (yet…) have any passenger trains).
The beds are comfortable, your fellow passengers are sociable and the samovar at the end of the wagon keeps the hot water flowing so you can refill your cup of tea endlessly
Or you could buy a yak…
Link to the Ministry of Railway Transport of Turkmenistan website
It seems the Ministry of Railway Transport of Turkmenistan does have a website. However there is some kind of configuration problem with their default page, which means index.html returns a 404 error and so http://www.railway.gov.tm doesn’t work and the site is rather hard to find.
The Ministry website does have some working pages, and these appear to be in Russian, which Google Translate generally does a reasonable job of translating into English. Here are the pages I’ve found:
- History
- Chronology of Turkmenistan’s railways:
- 15 November 1897 Construction of the railway Merv – Kushka
- 4 December 1898 Start of through traffic Merv – Kushka (293 versts [=313 km])
- News. Mostly calls for tenders, some in English. The last update was 24 March 2011
- The North-South line from Kazakhstan to Iran
- Construction of social facilities
- Construction of a bridge across the Amu Darya
- Contact details
(in case this posting attracts web traffic from people who are looking for the official website: I have no connection with – or contacts at – any railway organisations within Turkmenistan. I’ve never been anywhere near the country. If you need to get in touch with them, you can find their details here; do let me know if they reply!).
Turkmenistan railways
“Turkmenistan” magazine had an issue about the country’s railways (PDF) in March 2006, which you can read online in English and Russian.
Turkmenistan is a bit of an information black hole, beyond the legendary revolving gold statue of the late president. There doesn’t even seem to be a website for the national railway company (unless anyone knows better?).
It appears that since 2004 Chinese suppliers have replaced most of the Soviet-era fleet with a range of single and double-unit diesels. I’m attempting to put together a list of the different types they have, but am finding the supplier and official news agency’s numbers don’t add up – if you can help, please do get in touch!
Herat railway construction and Afghan coal mining on video
There are downloadable MP4 format videos entitled Afghanistan Train Line, Coal Baghlan Province and Gold Mine on the website of Awaz News, “an Afghan independent news agency operating throughout Afghanistan and providing in-depth reporting to television and radio networks.”
On the “Economy/Infrastructures” section of the website, the “Afghanistan Train Line” (13 minutes) video includes images of bridges and construction sites, along with Iranian flags. While the commentary is not in English (presumably it is Dari – can anyone confirm?) there are some recognisable place names. From this, I think the video might well show hard evidence of construction works underway for the Iran to Herat railway. The video shows bridges and cuttings, but no sign of tracklaying or railway systems installation.
The computer generated impressions of trains are clearly not of Afghanistan – they appear to show Skoda CityElefant electric trains from the Czech Republic.
The “Gold Mine” video (12.12 minutes) has some brief railway shots, I suspect of the Karkar and Dudkash coal mines.
The mines are covered depth in the “Coal Baghlan Province” video (13.5 min) on the Natural Resources section of the Awaz News website, this video is well worth a watch if you are interested in industrial things.
Museum photos and an angle iron plan
We saw the old trains of Kabul as well, which was very cool. I knew there was an original railway here but I didn’t know where or if it was still in Kabul.
A Day at the Afghanistan National Museum is an article by Jim Rentfrow at the website of the Green Gem Foundation, “new non-profit organization established to promote the development of ethical gemstones“.
He describes a visit to the museum on 17 December 2011, with some good photos of the “non-plinthed” Henschel steam locos, which along with the remains of the coaches seem to have gained a roof over them, which is good news.
Angle iron
Angle Iron Rail Project is Green Gem Foundation project to fund a “rudimentary rail system” based on trolleys running on angle iron tracks to ease work in gem mines in Kunduz, Nuristan or elsewhere. Apparently coal and peridot mines in Pakistan use this system.