The British supposedly moved the 8 Tosi diesel engines to help in their North African campaign.  Presumably, this was done because there was equipment in Libya which needed the engines for the British war effort.  I had understood they had stole the engines while the UK was under UN mandate to protect Eritrea and resented them for it.  They may have done other things to Eritrea which shouldn't have been done, but I don't believe this was one of them.  I believe the British dismantled it to spite the Italians.  The Italians held great pride in this engineering accomplishment.  I have recently read a report showing that the line was reconstructed in India during the war. This report is false as the full system (less 8 diesel engines) was in Eritrea in 1962.

This picture was in A History of Kagnew Station with the caption "Since most of the heavy machinery was sunk in the Atlantic, work in Gura got underway with salvaged Italian equipment."  I was  99 44/100% certain these were two of the engines for the Ropeway.  This picture came from History of Kagnew Station at Rick Fortney's Kagnew Station Site. He was originally only able to get an electrostatic copy of the original document.  An original edition from the Air University revealed that these were Worthington engines and not Tosi as were used on the Ropeway.  However, these are probably of comparable size to the Tosi engines.