Ismail saw himself as a builder. He took out huge loans and earned a lot of money from long-staple
Assiut, and including the first line in the Sudan, to Khartoum
. Ismail's railroad plans were to wait more than 30 years before they were realized.
Construction
Lord Kitchener, years later
In 1896, Major
Horatio Kitchener decided to build the railroad Ismail had planned, but this railroad was not to bring civilization to Sudan or to transport cotton, as Ismail had planned, but to feed and supply the army in Sudan for the Mahdist War. The original plan was to construct the road directly from the former caravan terminus at Korosko, but a shorter route to Wadi Halfa
was employed instead, with the link to Egypt provided by steamboat ferry.
Gauge
The man who approved the expenditure for the railroad,
Cape gauge of 3 feet 6 inches (1,067 mm), the same track width that Cecil Rhodes was then laying between Kimberley and Bulawayo. It turned out that Kitchener had met Rhodes only a few weeks before, when Rhodes stopped in Cairo to obtain some donkeys for use in Rhodesia
from Kitchener.
Difficulties
Even though Rhodes diverted three locomotives to Kitchener that were intended for his own railroad, it did not prevent Kitchener's railroad from becoming an engineering nightmare. There was a "total lack of suitable labor, tools, and materials".[1]
Completion
Khartoum Light Railway, c. 1910
In the end, with the help of some "
fellahin" (Arabic for farmers) brought from Egypt, and 200 convicts who were paroled for the job, the rail line was completed. There was, however, an unfortunate side effect. The result of the unskilled labor force created "a fairly bumpy ride and frequent accidents — locomotives that flew off tracks and down 15-foot (4.6 m) embankments were hoisted back on the rails and continued along as if nothing had happened."[2]
The railroad helped win the war for the Anglo-Egyptian army against the Mahdist State. The rail line left a gap between Sellal, just south of Aswan, and Wadi Halfa, however, which was covered by a river ferry. Kitchener's line, on a different gauge from the Egyptian line, connected Wadi Halfa with Khartoum North by 1899 and became the main north–south rail connection of the Sudan.[3]
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