The history of rail transport in Zambia began at the start of the twentieth century.
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Railway construction in the then British South Africa Company-administered protectorate of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) was driven primarily by Cecil Rhodes, who had a vision of a Cape-Cairo railway. However, the economic spur was to access the mines of Central Africa. In 1899, the Rhodesian Railways were established. The company built and ran the railways of Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia as an integrated operation, and was one of the largest employers and enterprises in both countries.
Track construction in Northern Rhodesia was mostly from south to north, and the lines were built in 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) Cape gauge. The railway arrived in the future Zambia early in 1905, when the 150 km (93 mi) long Livingstone–Kalomo line was built in advance of completion in September of that year of the Victoria Falls Bridge from the then Southern Rhodesia to Livingstone. The first wagons on the line were hauled by oxen, then a single locomotive was conveyed in pieces by cableway across the gorge where the bridge was being built to start up operations to Kalomo in advance of the main line connection.[1]
Another major bridge was required to cross the Kafue River and the 427 m (1,401 ft) long Kafue Railway Bridge, the longest on the Rhodesian Railways or Zambian Railways network, was completed in 1906.
The line reached Broken Hill (now Kabwe) in 1906 and Ndola in the Copperbelt in 1909 (connecting to Sakania in the Belgian Congo, and thus the Congolese railway network), some 20 years before the first large-scale copper mines opened there. In 1916, the Kalomo-Broken Hill section was opened by Mashonaland Railways. In 1929, the Benguela Railway was completed, giving access to the Atlantic port of Benguela.
In Zambia more lines were built. In the Copperbelt, a connection from Ndola to Chingola via Kitwe was opened approximately parallel to the line in the Belgian Congo. In 1923 to 1924, the Zambezi Sawmills Railway - later Mulobezi Railway - was built as a private railway for the extraction of teak from Mulobezi and Kataba to its north. It linked with several branch lines, and also operated passenger services as far as Kataba. A line from Choma to Masuku was also built in the southwest of the country and three short branch lines in the Copperbelt, leading to Chililabombwe, Mufulira and Luanshya.
Until the mid-1960s, sleeper trains went from Ndola via Livingstone to Bulawayo in what was then Southern Rhodesia.
In 1964, Northern Rhodesia became independent under the name Zambia. The railway company was divided, and the part belonging to Zambia was renamed Zambia Railways. Traffic between Zambia and Southern Rhodesia - which was called Rhodesia until 1979 - was suspended until the foundation of the state of Zimbabwe in 1980.
From 1964, discussions took place about a proposed railway line between Tanzania and Zambia. As Great Britain had not shown any interest in the proposal, the People's Republic of China joined in. The PRC government sponsored construction of the railway specifically to eliminate Zambia's economic dependence on Rhodesia and South Africa.[2] The contractual foundations were closed in 1967, and one year later, the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) was established, as a condominial railway[3] owned by Tanzania and Zambia.
The TAZARA was built in Cape gauge, which was common in southern Africa, but new to Tanzania. The line was handed over to the company as it was completed in sections in 1973 and 1974.
The TAZARA has been a major economic conduit in the region. However, it has never been profitable and more recently it has suffered from competition from road transport (such as the Trans–Caprivi Highway and Walvis Bay Corridor to Namibia) and the re-orientation of Zambia's economic links towards South Africa after the end of apartheid.[4] As of October 2008, a Tanzanian newspaper described the TAZARA's condition as being "on the verge of collapse due to financial crisis", with the operator being three months late on paying worker's wages and most of its 12 locomotives being out of service.[5] At the beginning of 2010 the Chinese government gave the financially crippled operator a US$39 million interest-free loan to revive its operations.[6][7]
Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rail_transport_in_Zambia Rail transport in Zambia] at Wikimedia Commons
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