Steam in Africa
©1981, A.E.Durrant, A.A.Jorgensen, C.P.Lewis
C. Struik, Capetown. South Africa
ERITREA
In 1906 the 'protective' European powers agreed to allow Italy to build a railway linking Eritrea with Italian Somaliland. This line was planned to run west of Addis Ababa and would have been a blatant breach of Ethiopian territorial sovereignty. However, nothing came of this project, nor of a much later and even more ambitious proposal after the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in 1935-36. This plan involved a direct railway line from Massaua to Addis Ababa and on down to Italian Somaliland, with an important branch to the port of Assab. Lesser branches would have extended westwards from Addis Ababa to Ginna and finally one other to Gondor, near Lake Tana.
Nevertheless, Italian railway achievements were formidable. The Massawa-Asmara railway, completed in 1911, is an engineering masterpiece in the best Italian tradition, the 118-km line climbing from sea level to 2 343 m – achieved with a ruling grade of 1 in 28, 30 tunnels, S32 bridges, viaducts and culverts, and with curves of 72 m radius. Less mountainous, but still impressive, was the Asmara-Agordat section, opened in 1922, and the extension to Biscia, opened in 1930 but now closed.
Farther south, along the coast at Mersa Fatma., a 65 km 'Decauville' (600 mm) line was constructed inland to Kolulli. Five 0-4-OT locomotives built by Decauville operated on this line, which also had two small 0 & K and Henschel tank engines and three American Porter 0-4-0Ts, built from 1900 to 1919. When this line was closed in 1929, most of the locomotives seem to have been scrapped, although the Porters escaped the torch by being transfcrred to Italian Somaliland in 1924 where, re-gauged to 950 mm, they continued their careers.
The last railway built in Eritrea was very short, in both length and
lifespan. It was located in Assab, the southernmost port in the country,
which had been bought from the local Arabs by the Italians in 1869. Although
the nomads' ideas of land ownership must have differed markedly from those
of the Italians, nobody disputed their right to this godforsaken piece
of real estate; they dreamt of the day when Assab would become the major
port for southern Ethiopia – in direct competition with French Djibouti.
In the late 1920s the Italians built a tarred road through to
Addis Ababa causing the French-owned CFE (Djibouti-Addis Ababa) railway
considerable grief. Finally, in 1939, the port was improved for strategic
reasons and a locomotive was brought in to help with the construction.
This was an old 1886 R.W. Hawthorn k Leslie 0-4-0T, which had operated
on a mineral railway in Sicily as an 850 mm gauge locomotive but was regauged
to 950 mm for Eritrean use. In the early 1950s C.'.S. Small found not a
trace of the railway although road transport operators were still doing
a flourishing business with Addis Ababa, no doubt to the displeasure of
the CFE railway.
The Italians fared no better against the Allies in Ethiopia and Eritrea. In spite of some early successes, by March 1941 the Italian army was retreating and within a month the entire Eritrean railway was in Allied hands. In Ethiopia, the Allied forces advanced to Dire Dawa and on to the Awash River – to find that the Italians had destroyed the major bridge. Within six weeks, the South African Brigade built a completely new rail bridge and by early May Addis Ababa was occupied. The Italian political presence had ended, though in Eritrea today her cultural influence is still noticeable, the cuisine's emphasis being on pasta, olive oil and garlic.
Since the colonial powers departed, the entire region has seen much
political upheaval, Ethiopia was recognized as an independent state in
January 1942, but Eritrea was a United Nations mandated territory
until 1952 when it was federated with Ethiopia. This move angered many
Retrains and by 1971 the Eritrean Liberation Front had begun an armed struggle
which severely disrupted railway operations. Along the border with Somalia,
which became independent in 1960, old grievances erupted and by 1977 a
full-scale war was being waged. With the French withdrawal from Djibouti
in 1978 (formerly
French Somaliland) the situation is even more volatile.
Locomotives
The sparsely-populated countries of this region have only operated
some 1,400 km of railways, with less than 1,100 km of line in operation
today. Traffic has never been particularly heavy and, in fact, road transport
has held the edge for many years. The Massawa-Asmara line, with its exceptional
grades, could handle only 2,500 to 3,000 gross tonnes a day, so the Italians
built a well-designed, parallel highway and an aerial-bucketway which is
a marvel of engineering expertise although not in use today.
In Eritrea, the Massawa-Agordat had 86 locomotives. Understandably, the choice of locomotive builders was dictated by political considerations. Italian builders supplied 76 engines which operated on the Asmara line. Overall, 'continental' builders supplied more than 90% of the region's needs and, as might he expected, two very 'continental' locomotive types appeared: the compound Mallet tank engine and the two-cylinder compound 2-8-0. The Mallets arrived first, becoming the mainstay of the Asmara line, while the two-cylinder compounds were the forerunners of a long line of superheated, simple-expansion 2-8-0s operated on the Addis Ababa line.
When first built, this railway had a gauge of 750 mm and seven small 0-4-0Ts were built by Henschel in 1887 for use on construction work. Immediately before construction was resumed in 1901, when the line's gauge was made to conform with that of Italy's own secondary railways, these small engines were converted to 950 mm gauge.
By 1904 the railway had crossed the dry coastal plain and the first
mountain foothills to Ghinda, 69 km from the coast, and was poised for
the assault on the mountain escarpment guarding the approaches to Asmara.
For powerful haulage capabilities in such terrain, articulated locomotives
were needed and in 1907 the first Mallets arrived: small 35-tonne 0-4-4-0Ts
typical of the period. They proved an immediate success and between 1911
and 1915 Ansaldo of Genoa built 25 duplicates. Three more engines were
constructed
from spare parts in 1931 and 1938, bringing the total in class
440 to 31 engines – two of which were still operating in the early 1970s.
The next Mallet type, class 441, was considerably larger, weighing 46 tonnes
and differing from the class 440 by having single-expansion steam distribution.
Sixteen of these were built between 1933 and 1936 and were the most powerful
engines to operate on the system – having a tractive effort of 13,606 kg
(29,970 lbs) compared to 6,946 kg (15,435 lbs) of the class 440 Mallets.
The first eight 441s, delivered in 1933, included three engines with Walschaert
valve gear and five with Caprotti valve gear. These engines were all super-heated,
hut the second batch, delivered in 1936 were saturated, although having
Walschaert gear. Later, one of the final batch was converted to compound
working, while in 194S four others were transferred to Libya by the British
administration. Towards the end of the 1950s, only the single compound
engine was still in service in Eritrea – an indication that the Italian
builders possibly miscalculated the boiler's ability to supply enough high-pressure
steam to the four hungry cylinders of the 441 class engines. The final
class of Mallets, the 442s, were all compound and superheated. Eight were
built in 1938 and though they weighed slightly more than the 441s, their
tractive effort, because of compound working, was naturally less (11,400
kg/25,140 lb). They were the most successful of the 54 Mallets operated
and it is worthy of note that as late as 1963 an additional engine was
built up from spare parts. The nine members of this class were still in
service in the early 1970s, being the principal mainline engines on the
mountain section. Sadly, recent reports indicate that several have been
shunted onto viaducts and dynamited – victims of Eritrea's civil war.
In view of this railway's reliance on articulated power, the absence
of Garratts is surprising, but the Italians, like their continental neighbors,
had a strong pro-Mallet bias. (When the Italians finally did attempt to
build a Garratt, the results were not a success.)
Between 1942 and 1952 the railway was administered by the British and
it has been reported that a British railway official once remarked: 'A
properly designed Garratt should pull at least twice the load of the toy
engines used by the Italians. However, nothing was done as the British
probably regarded the railway as too unimportant to merit improvements.
Anyway, the introduction of more powerful locomotives would have created
other problems, for the numerous passing loops on the mountain were designed
to carry trains limited to 12 vehicles weighing 100 gross tonnes. Such
braking as there was also presented problems. Through train-line brakes
had never been used and, as a result, two brakemen were required for every
three wagons... to set the brakes by hand as the train rolled downhill.
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