A 20 March 2009 article from the Open Society Institute’s EurasiaNet website.
Tajikistan: rail link to Afghanistan under construction
Tajikistan has begun construction on a railway line to connect the capital Dushanbe with the southern city of Khorgan-Tepe near the Afghan border. Once completed, the link could be used by US and NATO forces transporting goods to Afghanistan through the newly opened Northern Distribution Network.
President Imomali Rahmon officially launched the Vakhdat-Yavan section of the line, the Interfax news agency reported March 20. Construction on the $130 million project is drawing on funds from the Tajik state rail company, but the government hopes to attract foreign investors, the report added.
In January Tajikistan received $14.79 million grant to complete a highway running from Khorgan-Teppe to Nizhny Pyanzh at the Afghan border. The nearly 24-kilometer stretch of road will link into a $37-million, US-funded bridge across the Pyanzh River to Shir Khan Bandar in Afghanistan. The bridge was completed in 2007. In August 2008, a border post at Nizhny Pyanzh, built at a cost of $6.5-million by the US Army Corps of Engineers, was given to the Tajik Customs Service.
Source: Copyright 2009 Open Society Institute. Reprinted with the permission of the Open Society Institute, 400 West 59th Street, New York, NY 10019 USA, www.EurasiaNet.org
By chance I came across your article on the the history of Afghan railways and was interested to learn of the part played by Capt. J L R MacDonald in early suveying of possible routes.
You are probably aware that he also surveyed a route for the East Africa line from Mombasa to Kisumu and the railway, by-and-large, follows his survey, (his original drawings are preserved in the railway museum in Nairobi),
He seems to have had a varied if somewhat chequered career and rubbed-up a number of people the wrong way, notably antagonising Francis Younghusband, who was the political officer in charge of an expedition to Tibet in 1904, with his heavy-handed if not murderous approach to subjugating the tibetans.
He did write a book, ‘Soldiering and Surveying in British East Africa’ a rather dour account of his experiences and one looks in vain through its pages for the essence of the man.
I believe he ended his military career as the officer-in-charge of balloons at the siege of Peking. Further comment on that would only risk a number of puns.
Kind regards,
Mike Quatermass.