Sudan has 4,725 kilometers of narrow-gauge, single-track railroads that serve the northern and central portions of the country. The main line runs from Wadi Halfa on the Egyptian border to Khartoum and southwest to Al Ubayyid via Sannar and Kusti, with extensions to Nyala in Southern Darfur and Wau in Bahr al Ghazal. Other lines connect Atbarah and Sannar with Port Sudan, and Sannar with Ad Damazin. A 1,400-kilometer line serves the al Gezira cotton-growing region. A modest effort to upgrade rail transport is currently underway to reverse decades of neglect and declining efficiency. Service on some lines may be interrupted during the rainy season.
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total: 5,063 km
1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) gauge (cape gauge): 4,347 km
610 mm (2 ft) gauge plantation lines: 716 km
note: the main line linking Khartoum to Port Sudan carries over two-thirds of Sudan's rail traffic
The main system, Sudan Railways, which was operated by the government-owned Sudan Railways Corporation, provided services to most of the country's production and consumption centers. The other line, the Gezira Light Railway, was owned by the Sudan Gezira Board and served the Gezira Scheme and its Manaqil Extension. Rail dominated commercial transport, although competition from the highways has been increasing rapidly.
The preeminence of the rail system is based on historical developments that led to its construction as an adjunct to military operations, although the first line, built in the mid-1870s from Wadi Halfa to a point about 54 km upstream on the Nile River, was initially a commercial undertaking. This line, which had not proved viable commercially, was extended in the mid-1880s and again in the mid-1890s to support the Anglo-Egyptian military campaigns against the Mahdiyah. Of little other use, it was abandoned in 1905.
The first segment of the present-day Sudan Railways, from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamad, was also a military undertaking; it was built by the British for use in General Herbert Kitchener's drive against to the Mahdiyah in the late 1890s. The line was pushed to Atbarah during the campaign and after the defeat of the Mahdiyah in 1898 was continued to Khartoum, which it reached on the last day of 1899. The line was built to 1067 mm gauge track specifications, the result apparently of Kitchener's pragmatic use of the rolling stock and rails of that gauge from the old line. This gauge was used in all later Sudanese mainline construction.
The line opened a trade route from central Sudan through Egypt to the Mediterranean and beyond. It became uneconomic because of the distance and the need for trans-shipment via the Nile, and in 1904 construction of a new line from Atbarah to the Red Sea was undertaken. In 1906 the new line reached recently built Port Sudan to provide a direct connection between Khartoum and ocean-going transport.
During the same decade, a line was also built from Khartoum southward to Sannar, the heart of the cotton-growing region of Al Jazirah. A westward continuation reached Al-Ubayyid, then the country's second largest city and center of gum arabic production, in 1911. In the north, a branch line was built from near Abu Hamad to Kuraymah that tied the navigable stretch of the Nile between the fourth and third cataracts into the transport system. Traffic in this case, however, was largely inbound to towns along the river, a situation that still prevailed in 1990.
In the 1920s, a spur of the railway was built from Taqatu Hayya, a point on the main line 200 km southwest of Port Sudan, south to the cotton-producing area near Kassala, then on to the grain region of Al Qadarif, and finally to a junction with the main line at Sannar. Much of the area's traffic, which formerly had passed through Khartoum, has since moved over this line directly to Port Sudan.
The final spur of railway construction began in the 1950s. It included extension of the western line to Nyala (1959) in Darfur Province and of a southwesterly branch to Wau (1961), southern Sudan's second largest city, located in the province of Bahr el Ghazal. This essentially completed the Sudan Railways network, which in 1990 totalled about 4800 route km.
| Route | Years | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Wadi Halfa- Abu Hamad | 1897-1898 | 350 km |
| Abu Hamad – Atbara | 1898 | 244 km |
| Atbara – Khartoum | 1898-1900 | 313 km |
| Atbara - Port Sudan | 1904-1906 | 474 km |
| Station No. 10 – Karima | 1905 | 222 km |
| Khartoum -Kosti – El Obeid | 1909-1911 | 689 km |
| Haiya - Kassala | 1923-1924 | 347 km |
| Kassala - Gedarif | 1924-1928 | 218 km |
| Gedarif – Sinnar | 1928-1929 | 237 km |
| Sinnar- Damazine | 1953 -1954 | 227 km |
| Aradeiba Junction – Babanousa | 1956-1957 | 354 km |
| Babanousa – Nyala | 1957-1959 | 335 km |
| Babanousa – Wau | 1959-1962 | 444 km |
| Girba - Digiam | 1962 | 70 km |
| Muglad - Abu Gabra | 1995 | 52 km |
Source:[1]
Conversion of Sudan Railways to diesel traction started in the late 1950s, but a few mainline steam locomotives continued in use in 1990, serving lines having lighter weight rails. Through the 1960s, rail essentially had a monopoly on transportation of export and import trade, and operations were profitable. In the early 1970s, losses were experienced, and, although the addition of new diesel equipment in 1976 was followed by a return to profitability, another downturn had occurred by the end of the decade. The losses were attributed in part to inflationary factors, the lack of spare parts, and the continuation of certain lines characterized by only light traffic, but retained for economic development needs and for social reasons. A number of South African diesel locomotives are in use in Sudan.
The chief cause of the downturn appeared to have been loss of operational efficiency. Worker productivity had declined. For example, repair of locomotives was so slow that only about half of the total number were usually operational. Freight car turnaround time had lengthened considerably, and the reported slowness of management to meet growing competition from road transport was also a major factor. The road system, although generally more expensive, was used increasingly for low-volume, high-value goods because it could deliver more rapidly—2 or 3 days from Port Sudan to Khartoum, compared with 7 or 8 days for express rail freight and up to two weeks for ordinary freight. At the end of the 1980s, moreover, only one to two percent of freight trains arrived on time. The gradual erosion of freight traffic was evident in the drop from more than 3 million tons carried annually at the beginning of the 1970s to about 2 million tons at the end of the decade. The 1980s also saw a steady erosion of tonnage as a result of a combination of inefficient management, union intransigence, the failure of agricultural projects to meet production goals, the dearth of spare parts, and the continuing civil war. The bridge at Aweil was destroyed in the 1980s and Wau is currently without rail access. During the civil war in the south (1983-2005) military trains went as far as Aweil accompanied by large numbers of troops and militia, causing great disruption to civilians and humanitarian aid organisations along the railway line.
Despite the rapidly growing use of roads, rail has remained of paramount importance because of its ability to move at lower cost the large volume of agricultural exports and to transport inland the increasing imports of heavy capital equipment and construction materials for development, such as requirements for oil exploration and drilling operations. Efforts to improve the rail system reported in the late 1970s and the 1980s included laying heavier rails, repairing locomotives, purchasing new locomotives, modernizing signaling equipment, expanding training facilities, and improving locomotive and rolling-stock repair facilities. One project would double-track the line from Port Sudan to the junction of the branch route to Sannar, thus in effect doubling the Port Sudan-Khartoum rail line. Substantial assistance has been furnished for these and other stock and track improvement projects by foreign governments and organizations, including the European Development Fund, the Development Finance Company, the AFESD, the International Development Association, Britain, France and Japan. Implementation of much of this work has been hampered by political instability in the 1980s, debt, the dearth of hard currency, the shortage of spare parts, and import controls. Rail was estimated in mid-1989 to be operating at less than 20% of capacity.
The Gezira Light Railway, one of the largest light railways in Africa, evolved from tracks laid in the 1920s' construction of the canals for the Gezira Scheme. At the time, rail had about 135 route km of 610 mm (2 ft) gauge track. As the size of the project area increased, the railway was extended and by the mid-1960s consisted of a complex system totaling 716 route km. Its primary purpose has been to serve the farm area by carrying cotton to ginneries and fertilizers, fuel, food, and other supplies to the villages in the area. Operations usually have been suspended during the rainy season.
Sources in the Sudan suggested that construction of a new southern extension railway would begin in January 2006, with an estimated cost of $US2 billion. Costello Garang, outgoing Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army Commissioner for International Co-operation is quoted by the East African Standard (Nairobi) saying that the necessary "crucial financial deal" has been concluded. A line was to be built from the present railhead, Wau, first south-eastwards to Juba (about 500 km), thence eastwards via Torit to the Kenyan border near Kapoeta (a further 250 km). This would be known as the Sudan-East Africa Railway, the intention being to extend eventually by way of Lokichoggio and Rongai to join the main Kampala-Mombasa route "pending a decision from the Kenyan authorities". It was envisaged that the project would be undertaken by Thormaehlen Holdings of Germany. According to Garang, who is to head the New Sudan Foundation as President and Chief [2] Executive, a line would be constructed in the first instance from Juba southwards along the White Nile to connect with the Ugandan system at Pakwach, about 150 km, where freight will be transshipped, as Uganda uses the 1000 mm gauge unlike Sudan's 1067 mm gauge.[3].
In October 2010, it was announced that ThyssenKrupp was leading a project to link Juba with Gulu, a town in northern Uganda.[4]
After declaration of independce of South Sudan 248 km of Babanousa-Wau line is no longer within (north) Sudan territory.
(connection to Uganda - North to South)
(connection to Kenya)
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