From Aus the line was extended in 1908 to Keetmanshoop, a distance inland of 230 miles from Lüderitzbucht. Situate in the Bezirk (district) of South-West Africa nearest to Cape Province, Keetmanshoop, with the railway as a source of supply from the chief harbour of the colony, developed into the leading military station of German South-West Africa.
At Keetmanshoop all the chief military authorities were stationed. It became the headquarters of the Medical Corps, the Ordnance Department, the Engineer and Railway Corps, and the Intelligence Corps of the Southern Command. It was the point of mobilisation for all the troops in that Command. It had a considerable garrison, and it had, also, an arsenal which a correspondent of the Transvaal Chronicle, who visited the town about two years before the outbreak of war in 1914 and gathered much information concerning the military preparations which had then already been made,[60] described as four times as large, and, in regard to its contents, four times as important, as the arsenal at Windhoek. Those contents included—47 gun carriages; fourteen 16-pounders; eighteen ambulances; 82 covered convoy vehicles; 3,287 wheels, mostly for trek ox-wagons; three large transportable marquees used as magazines and containing 28,000 military rifles; huge quantities of bandoliers, kits, etc.; three further magazines for ammunition, and large stores of fodder; while further military supplies were constantly arriving by train from Lüderitzbucht, whither they were brought from Germany by German ships. In the arsenal workshops was a staff of men actively engaged on the making of, among other military requirements, 1,000 saddles and water bags for the Camel Corps kept available for crossing the desert between the furthest limit of the railway and the Cape Province border.
It was, also, in this south-eastern district, and in immediate proximity, therefore, to Cape Province and Bechuanaland, that the military forces kept in the colony had all their principal manœuvres.
Of still greater importance, from a strategical standpoint, was the branch of this Southern Railway which, starting from Seeheim, forty miles west of Keetmanshoop, continued in a south-easterly direction to Kalkfontein, eighty miles north of Raman's Drift, on the Orange River, and less than ninety miles from Ukamas, where the Germans had established a military post within five miles of Nakob, situate on the Bechuanaland border, only forty miles from Upington, in Cape Province. From Kalkfontein the branch was to be continued another thirty miles to Warmbad, and so on to Raman's Drift—a convenient point for the passage of the Orange River into Cape Province territory by an attacking force. At Seeheim, the junction of this branch line, a Service Corps was stationed; Kalkfontein was the headquarters of the Camel Corps of 500 men and animals; and at Warmbad there was a military post and a military hospital.
The North-to-South line allowed of an easy movement of troops between the military headquarters at Keetmanshoop and Windhoek, or vice versâ. According to the original estimates this line was not to be completed before 1913. Special reasons for urgency—as to the nature of which it would be easy to speculate—led, however, to the line being opened for traffic on March 8, 1912. From Windhoek, also, troops were supplied to Gobabis, situate 100 miles east of the capital and about forty miles west of the Bechuanaland frontier. Gobabis became a German military station in 1895. Provided with a well-equipped fort, it became the chief strategical position on the eastern border of German South-West Africa. A railway connecting Gobabis with Windhoek was to have been commenced in 1915.
From Windhoek, as already told, there is rail communication with Swakopmund.
Grootfontein, the terminus, on the east, of the Swakopmund-Otavi line, had been a military station since 1899. Its special significance lay in the fact that it was the nearest point of approach by rail to the "Caprivi Strip," along which the German troops, conveyed as far as Grootfontein by rail, were to make their invasion of the adjoining British territory of Rhodesia. Troop movements in this direction would have been further facilitated by a link at Karibib connecting the Swakopmund-Otavi-Grootfontein line with the one to Windhoek and thence to the military headquarters at Keetmanshoop. Karibib was itself a military base, in addition to having large railway offices and workshops.
With, therefore, the minor exceptions, the system of railways in German South-West Africa had been designed or developed in accordance with plans which had for their basis an eventual attack on British territory in three separate directions—(1) Cape Province, (2) Bechuanaland and (3) Rhodesia. The Southern and the North-to-South lines had, also, been built exclusively with the standard Cape gauge of 3 ft. 6 in., so that, when "der Tag" arrived, and German succeeded British supremacy in South Africa, these particular lines could be continued in order to link up with those which the Germans would then expect to take over from Cape Province. Keetmanshoop was eventually to be converted from a terminus to a stopping-place on a through line of German railway from Lüderitzbucht to Kimberley, the effect of which, it was pointed out, would be to shorten the distance from Europe to Bulawayo by 1,300 miles as compared with the journey via the Cape. Surveys had been made for extensions (1) from Keetmanshoop, via Hasuur, to the Union frontier near Rietfontein, and (2) from Kalkfontein, on the southern branch, to Ukamas, also on the frontier and in the direction of Upington, in Union territory. Each of these additions would have carried the original scheme a stage further, though it was not, apparently, thought wise to make them before "der Tag" actually arrived.
On these various railways the Government of German South-West Africa had expended, so far as the available figures show, a total of, approximately, £8,400,000, defrayed in part from Imperial funds and in part from the revenue of the Protectorate. This total includes the amount paid by the Government to the South-West Africa Company for their line from Swakopmund to the Company's mines at Otavi and Tsumeb, but it does not include the cost of the original narrow-gauge Government line from Swakopmund to Windhoek, of which the section between Swakopmund and Karibib was abandoned when the Swakopmund-Otavi line, via Karibib, was taken over, the remaining section from Karibib to Windhoek being then converted into the Cape 3 ft. 6 in. gauge. On most of the open lines no more than two or three trains a week were run, and on some of the branches there was only one train in the week.[61]