Eisenbahnforum

A mineral railway and enlarged harbour were constructed in 1853/1854 with a first significant cargo of limestone leaving the Carnlough harbour for Scotland in mid-August 1854.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2026/04/23/th ... co-antrim/

The Railways of West Cumberland – Part 1 – An Introduction The November 1954 issue of The Railway Magazine included an article by C. A. Knight about the railways between Sellafield and Maryport and inland as far as Cockermouth and Kelton Fell. Reading Knight’s article encouraged me to begin a revie...

Parliament and the Railways in 1858. N. Caplan reviewed parliamentary activity relating to railways in 1858 in The Railway Magazine of December 1958. His aim was to encourage research into railway history through the various Acts of Parliament relating to railways. http://rogerfarnworth.com/2026/05...

Part 1 Introduction and the Route of the Railway from Gällivare to Arvidsjaur The featured image for this article is a picture of Swedish State Railways (Swedish: Statens Järnvägar) Locomotive No. 907 at Arvidsjaur Railway Station. The image is dated May 1935, (c) Public Domain. [60] Known as Swede...

Part 1 - A Short History The featured image for this article is a 4-4-0 Locomotive No. 694 – one of a class of 15 built by the North British Locomotive Company in Scotland for Egyptian State Railways in 1905-06, © Public Domain. [1] Egyptian National Railways (Al-Sikak al-Ḥadīdiyyah al-Miṣriyyah) i...

The November 1954 edition of The Railway Magazine contained an article by Robert Legget about the Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire. He was surprised to find that in 1954 it was claiming to be 'the first mountain climbing railway in the world'. It is beyond doubt that it is among the pio...

Part 6 – The British Mandate and the Trust – The Years of British Rule including the approach of World War II

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2026/05/01/ra ... rld-war-ii

Part 5 – Tanga to Ruvu (and thence to Dar-es-Salaam)

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2026/04/29/ra ... -es-salaam

Following on from a couple of articles about the Tanat Valley Light Railway written some years back, I was reading some older rather tatty magazines and found an article entitled “Rails up the Tanat Valley” in an issue of the Ian Allan publication ‘Railway World‘ – the June 1990 edition. The feature...

The Railway Magazine of November 1954 reported that East African Railways & Harbours had begun to name its new ’60’ Class Beyer- Garratt locomotives. They chose to name them after past and present Governors. The ’60’ Class were then the most powerful Beyer-Garratt locomotives to be delivered to...

Steam Heating Tenders for Class 4E locomotives The November 1954 edition of The Railway Magazine reported that, “An improved type of steam-heating tender for electric main-line trains has been brought into use on the Cape Western and Natal systems of South African Railways. The new tenders are fitt...

Les Chemins de Fer du Sud de la France - Ligne du Littoral - St. Raphael -Toulon. (Chemins de Fer de Provence/Alpes-Maritimes No. 94) This very short post returns to the coastal line between St. Raphael and Toulon. Two videos make use of historic photographs which have been given a treatment using ...

600 mm Narrow Gauge Lines used during World War 1 in East Africa – Predominantly in what is now Tanzania 600 mm gauge trolley lines (often known as Feldbahnen or “field railways”) played a crucial role in the East African Campaign of the First World War, particularly in German East Africa (GEA) whe...

This short line originated from a proposal made by the stationmaster at Wendover. [1: p97] The featured image for this short article is a photograph of a OO-Gauge model of Wendover Railway Station built by David Dan Givens and covered in the September 2018 edition of Hornby Magazine. The image shows...

Part 10 – The Mkumbara to Neu Hornow Cableway/Ropeway, Usambara Hills, German East Africa/Tanganyika The western Usambara Hills were characterised by precipitous cliffs and deep gorges. The provision of a rail link between Mkumbara and Neu Hornow was not considered practical. A 9 km long ropeway wa...

A number of different articles are under preparation, this is the next completed article: Part 9 – Narrow-Gauge Industrial Lines The featured image for this article shows a train on the Kihuhui Bridge on the Sigi Railway in Tanganyika. Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania) possessed a dense network of i...

Railways of Tanzania – Part 4 – Moshi to Arusha The featured image in the linked post is a photograph of East African Railways (EAR) 29 class steam locomotive no. 2904 at Moshi depot, Tanzania, © Basil Roberts and licenced for reuse under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). The Moshi-Arusha ...

Part 3 - The Railway Line from Voi to Kahe

The majority of this line was in Kenya, built to support the war effort in the First World War.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2026/04/09/ra ... i-tanzania

Part 2 - The Route of the Usambarabahn The Route of the Usambara Railway – Tanga to Moshi In 2018, the Government of Tanzania invested 5.7 billion Tanzanian shillings to rehabilitate the line. As of July 2019, diesel powered cargo trains were leaving Tanga Railway Station again. Passenger transport...

This thread is meant to cover all the railways of Tanzania, starting with the old metre-gauge lines. Over recent years, I have reported events relating to the railways of Kenya and Uganda but have singularly failed to do so in relation to the railway network in Tanzania. This has probably been becau...

The featured image in the linked article shows a horse-drawn/mule-drawn tram in Zanzibar before the turn of the 20th century. Zanzibar hosted two early rail systems, with a mule-drawn tramway operating from 1879 to 1888 between Stone Town and Chukwani, which later used a steam locomotive. A second, ...

February 2026 – Kenya and Uganda Railways – Latest News I spent 3 weeks in Uganda in February 2026. This short article picks up on local news reports about developments relating to railways in East Africa early in 2026. …. This article follows on from one published early in December 2025. The featu...

Shoeburyness History, Standard-Gauge Military Tramway, and other Narrow-Gauge Tramways Shoeburyness was once a fortified place guarding the Northern flank of the Thames Estuary. It appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 894 CE, and it was assumed for many years to have been built as a ‘Danish Camp...

Barrow-in-Furness Steam Tramway The Barrow-in-Furness Tramways Company operated a steam-powered tram service from 11th July 1885 until electrification in 1904. Using a 4 ft (1.219 m) gauge, the tramway reached Ramsden Dock by 1886 and continued expanding through the electric era to locations such a...

Barrow was featured in The Railway Magazine in March 1959. The rebuilding of the old Central Station at Barrow-in-Furness which was virtually destroyed in the air-raids of 1941 was completed in the late 1950s. The replacement buildings marked another link broken with Barrow’s past. Originally known ...

The featured image for the linked article is a photograph of Saint Felicien Railway Station in 1959. In the North of Québec, some 300 miles from Montreal, there is an area of extensive mining – deposits of copper, zinc, gold and cobalt wee being mined in the mid-20th century. In the first half of th...

Developments in Freight Transport – The Railway Magazine – January 1959 A, then, recent exhibition at Battersea Wharf Goods Depot of British Railways and British Road Services freight vehicles and handling equipment prompted a review in The Railway Magazine of January 1959, of developments in the h...

Part 9 – The Short Golden Age I am writing this article having just returned to Menton where we were staying in November 2025. We travelled to and from Tende which is the terminus of Zest Bus Ligne 25. There was little action to observe at the railway station. The line from Nice to Tende via Breil-...

The featured image shows a passenger train on the Edaville Railroad, made up of coaches from other narrow gauge lines, running on a shallow embankment over a cranberry bog, © Public Domain. [1: p555] Originally known as ‘The Cranberry and Small Fry Line’, the Edaville Railroad is a 2ft-gauge narrow ...

Just a snap shot of the things appearing in the March 1959 issue of The Railway Magazine. [1] 1. There were adverts on the inside of the front cover – 5 of them. …. (Page ii of the March 1959 Railway Magazine.) The 34th Model Railway Club Model Railway Exhibition was due to take place in Easter Week...