Afghan railroads, past, present and future
A Russian-language photograph archive with images of the official opening ceremony for the Friendship bridge between the USSR and Afghanistan on 12 May 1982, and associated events including a tree-planting ceremony on the previous day.
The photos include a view of the bridge decorated with large photos of Soviet and Afghan bigwigs – I think they are Brezhnev on the left and Afghanistan’s President Karmal on the right(?).
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:
A photo of the Khyber Pass railway from the Railway Gazette International archives.
On the back of the picture is a handwritten caption: “On the Khyber Railway – a push trolly on a down grade entering a tunnel, after it has already passed through the top tunnel. P.W.R.”.
PWR is presumably Pakistan Western Railway. The back of the picture has a 30 March 1962 date stamp; this might be when the picture was developed or when the magazine received it, rather than when the picture was taken.
Click the image for more details.
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.
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:
Crossing to Heiraton (Uzbek border) with railroad
, 6 August 2012 by Julian-G. Albert. I think this picture is where the railway running south from Uzbekistan crosses the A76 road near Naiababad, and turns west to head towards Gur-e-Mar.
A new page about the three steam locomotives at the National Museum of Afghanistan.
A page from The Graphic of 22 September 188x (looks like a 3, but the caption says 8), showing the construction of the Trans-Caspian Railway in what is now Turkmenistan.
