L’ULTIMO TRENO
After a glorious swansong, the end really has come for steam in Eritrea - Africa’s Darjeeling…
Steam’s last gasp in Eritrea
Pietro chalked ‘L’ultimo treno’ - ‘the last train’ - on the smokebox of Ansaldo Mallet tank engine No. 55. We all gathered for a farewell photograph in front of the engine, culminating with the peculiar local greeting of touching our respective right shoulders together three times at the same time as shaking hands. The driver then eased No. 55 back into the shed. There seemed little likelihood of another day’s work for the engine; there is precious little coal left, no more freight and no more passengers. Will there ever be any more trains? No. 55 had completed its trilogy: it was the last engine to be used on our trip, the first engine to run on the rehabilitated railway after Eritrea’s war with Ethiopia, and also the last engine to run on the Eritrean Railway before the war took its terrible toll, and during which it was almost completely destroyed. If it does not run again, it certainly deserves a place in an Eritrean national museum. This railway provided one of the most outstanding train trips in the world. Along with the more famous railways which conquered the Rockies, the Andes, the Himalayas and the Alps, the Eritrean Railway masters the climb from the Red Sea up Africa’s Rift Valley, and can claim its place as one of the railway wonders of the world. Furthermore, the trip is only possible using the line’s original equipment and steam haulage, even in the 21st century. The history of this remarkable railway is, to a great extent, the history of Eritrea itself, as it was essential to the creation of the Italian colony and the development of its mountain art deco capital city to Mussolini’s decree.
ROMAN RAIL
The Eritrean Railway was built on the Horn of Africa to help create Mussolini’s ambition to develop a second Roman Empire. By that time, only Libya and Eritrea were left uncoloured on the map of the African continent. The 950mm gauge railway climbs 7,143ft through the Eritrean mountains over 73 miles from the Red Sea port of Massawa (a leading contender for one of the hottest places on Earth) up to the Italian showpiece model capital city of Asmara, mostly on a constant gradient of 1-in-28 twisting and turning like spaghetti through a rabbit run of some 39 tunnels and over 65 bridges. There are few railways in the world which can boast such a climb - an engineering achievement of the first magnitude. The line was extended
further towards the Sudanese border through the city of Keren to Agordat. It took almost 25 years to reach the capital from the sea with the line opening to Asmara in 1911, but it took another 11 years to reach Agordat and the line never reached Kassala in the Sudan as intended. In any case, that was a vain hope as the Sudanese Railways would never have surrendered their traffic to a foreign railway company. This railway became the lifeline for the development of Eritrea, It was operated almost exclusively by two Mallet 0-4-4-0T classes built by Italian firm Ansaldo, together with some Hornby lookalike 0-4-0Ts built by Breda for shunting. Even in the the steam locomotives, Mussolini’s influence was evident, as their worksplates displayed ‘XVI’, as well as 1938, denoting the year of their build as the 16th year of fascist rule in the second Roman Empire. There were two ways for a passenger to make the journey up into the mountains. For third class passengers with more time than money on their hands there was a ten-hour trip behind one of the Mallets. First and second class passengers could enjoy a three hour and 45 minute journey in one of the Littorina railcars built by Fiat in the 1930s, which provided a great view of the line ahead and a bar dispensing warm beer. The larger of the two Mallet types could only drag 90 tons up the mountain escarpments from the engine changing station of Ghinda, and the small Mallets were only rated to haul 55 tons. Taking into account the tare weight of the rolling stock, the payloads were small. However, Eritrea was hardly ever at peace and, ironically, the railway was at its busiest in time of war. During the Second World War, England took the country off the Italians and, in 1952, merged it with Ethiopia, effectively painting Eritrea off the map, but this sowed the seeds of resistance. The People’s Liberation Front of Eritrea subsequently fought a guerilla war against the Ethiopian army, won their country back and have been running it ever since. Now, as many as a thousand Eritreans a month flee to Europe over the very dangerous overland route through Sudan and Libya and
then put themselves at the mercy of the Mediterranean. Eritrea’s economy is destitute. Yet Asmara feels like one of the safest places in the world, a city of cafés and pizza bars where young locals, both Christians and Muslims, sit side by side and chat over black coffee. The Eritreans are fond of their railway and, after the civil war when the PLF gained control and recreated Eritrea, one of the President’s first orders was for the war-torn line, closed in 1975, to be rebuilt, thus establishing a lifeline back to the Red Sea. Of course, there may have been an ulterior motive to all this by keeping the army busy when there was no war to fight.
‘DARJEELING OF AFRICA’
So, amazingly, in 1994, this ‘Darjeeling of Africa’ railway began to recover, with steam engines once again hauling trains up the escarpments to the art deco capital city. But despite the great efforts of General Manager Amanuel Ghebreselassie, who has sadly passed away, it featured precious little traffic apart from local Sunday excursions down the mountain from Asmara to Arbaroba, together with infrequent international enthusiast photographic excursions. Now there is nobody to motivate the staff on the railway. The competing road running alongside the whole of the line has been tarred for Chinese mine traffic and, little by little, the railway is succumbing to an influx of mud, especially on the flat section near Asmara; its life seems to be fading away. However, the entrepreneurial Bernd Seiler of Farrail in Germany was not deterred and he set about importing coal from Zimbabwe, shipping it to Massawa via Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah. He also negotiated some essential repairs to several Mallets, to enable a photographic last call railtour to be run, just before Christmas in 2014. After a false start in the previous year when Bernd was forced to cancel the tour due to landslides and washaways, he assembled over 40 people from many nationalities in Asmara to pay their last respects to this remarkable railway by hiring trains for a week. Our trip was a very close call, however: even in the days leading up to our arrival, more mudslides had blocked the line on the flat section near the Red Sea and, had Bernd been aware of this before setting out, he would undoubtedly have cancelled this tour. He made one subsequent trip, but it amounted to some shunting around the yard. And now, the coal supply has run out.
TAKE THE CHANCE
We were lucky to have all three remaining classes of engine working for us on photographic charters over a week, hauling both the line’s ordinary coaches and old freight wagons. On one of the days we even gave the locals a free ride which they very much enjoyed; some of the village children were experiencing their first - and maybe only - train trip. The steam engines were in deplorable condition but, apart from some injector failures, managed to hang together during the trip, sometimes even putting in a good turn of speed over the hairraising mountain climb. We were also lucky to sample the last remaining example of the ‘440’ Mallet class, the original and smaller type, which ran for one day, and a gutsy performance it put in, too. Apparently its tubes were some 40 years old and nobody had any idea of when its last boiler overhaul took place. But, taking our lives into our own hands, we enjoyed an exhilarating and memorable evening footplate ride, sitting in the coal bunker atop a pile of coal spilling onto the cab floor of this venerable machine, as it roared back up the mountainside to Asmara. In quieter moments, while engines were watering, we could look out over the mountain escarpments and watch eagles soaring in the sky and scouring the man-made terraces on the mountainside for food. Then we would ride back up the mountainside on the rear balcony of the old four-wheeled freight wagons, clinging to the handrails for dear life as the train roared up the grade, through tunnel after tunnel and onward over escarpments which clung to the mountain ranges, before retiring to one of the local pizza bars to savour our day’s experiences, and a bottle of red wine. It was clear from the beginning of the trip that the railway had no reason to run any trains. Nothing had moved out on the line for days and our train encountered tree saplings growing in the tracks. On the first morning, the Mallet had trouble getting out of the shed as the small turntable refused to budge - a coping stone had been dislodged by weeds and prevented the girder of the turntable from rotating. No pre-trip checks or preventative maintenance had been carried out by the railway. Such are the risks of 21st century railway photographic safaris! However, we still came home with many hundreds of photographs, several excellent pictures and many travel experiences, including attending the weekly Monday camel market at Keren to watch the negotiations for animal sales. Local Eritreans also enjoyed our trip, photographing us with their mobile phones. Hundreds of village kids turned out to see the foreigners and demanded pencils to help them with their school work. The moral of this story is that you should take every opportunity available to experience such sights on railway safaris when they become available. Memories and experiences can never be taken away, and you can’t take money with you to that great engine shed in the sky. If you get the chance, go and enjoy an adventure!