Electric trains for Tanzania

HYUNDAI Rotem from South Korea has won a £210 million contract to build 80 eight car 160km/h EMUs and 17 electric locomotives for Tanzania Railways. The new trains, which will be delivered by 2024, will be used on the new 546km long Dar es Salaam to Makutopora standard gauge line now nearing completion and which will utilise electrification at 25kV AC. The first 207km long stage from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro was built by Turkish and Portuguese contractors and is now being tested and should open before December. Planning is underway to extend the new line westwards and north to Mwanza on the shores of Lake Victoria, Turkish and Chinese companies have won two of the four contracts awarded so far. Construction of the northern Ithaca to Mwanza section began on June 14. In the longer term, it is planned to extend west into neighbouring Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. The new line replaces the existing life expired metre gauge line Tanganyika Railway/ Tanganjikabahn dating from the German colonial period pre WW1; it opened in stages between 1907 and August 1914.