Meanwhile, however, there had been a change of policy which affected the whole situation. On the return of the expeditionary force to Korti (situate at the southern extremity of the great Nile bend), the whole of the country to the south thereof passed under the control of the Dervishes; and the British Government, reluctant at that time to enter on the formidable task of reconquest, decided that no further military operations should be taken in hand, and that the Sudan must be definitely abandoned. Orders were accordingly given by Lord Wolseley in May, 1885, for the withdrawal of the troops from all stations south of Dongola, which itself was abandoned on June 15, the retreat continuing as far as Akasha. Beyond this point, therefore, platelaying for the proposed railway extension was not carried, although the formation levels had been completed to Firket.
Subsequently the British retreat was continued to Wady Halfa, which then became the southern frontier of Egypt, the railway extension thence to Akasha, together with all posts to the south of Wady Halfa, being also abandoned.
Excellent service had, nevertheless, been rendered by the railway, as far as it was carried.
Operation of the line had been taken over by the 8th (Railway) Company, R.E., who, at the outset, had at their disposal only five more or less decrepit locomotives, fifty open trucks, five covered goods vans, and six brake vans. The troops were conveyed in the open trucks, and by the end of 1884 all the stores for the opening of the campaign had been passed up. During the course of 1885 additional locomotives and rolling stock were obtained from the Cape.
Summing up the work done on the Sudan Military Railway for the Nile Expedition of 1884-5, Lieut. M. Nathan, R.E.,[39] says that it included (1) the repair and maintenance of thirty-three and a half miles of existing railway; (2) the construction of fifty-three and a half miles of new line through a nearly waterless desert, with no means of distributing material except the line itself; (3) the transport, for the most part with limited and indifferent stock, of about 9,000 troops round the worst part of the second cataract when going up the river, and round nearly the whole of it when coming down; and (4) the carriage of 40,000 tons for an average distance of thirty-six and a half miles.
As against what had thus been achieved in the Nile Valley must be set a failure on the Red Sea.
When, on the fall of Khartoum in January, 1885, the British Government first decided on an extension of the Nile Valley Railway, they further resolved on the building of a military railway from Suakin to Berber, on the Nile, in order to have a second line of communication available for Lord Wolseley's Army; and an Anglo-Indian force was sent to Suakin, under the command of General Sir Gerald Graham, in order, first, to defeat the Dervishes in the Eastern Sudan, and then to protect the construction of the proposed railway. Such a line would obviously have been of great strategical value to a Nile expeditionary force; but the attempt to build it broke down owing, in part, to the defective nature of the organisation resorted to, though still more to the active opposition of the enemy.
Sir Andrew Clarke, Inspector-General of Fortifications, had from the first advocated that the line should be supplied and laid by the military engineering strength then available; but he was over-ruled, and the work was given to an English firm of contractors in the expectation, as Major-General Whitworth Porter tells, in volume two of the "History of the Corps of Royal Engineers," "that the necessary material would be supplied more readily, and in shorter time, through civilian agency." It was, however, decided to send the 10th (Railway) Company of Royal Engineers both to carry out some local works in the neighbourhood of Suakin and to assist the contractors in the longer undertaking; and this military element was strengthened, not only by a force of Indian coolies, but, also, by the addition of thirty-nine members of Engineer Volunteer Corps in England who had enlisted for the campaign, all having had experience in trades qualifying them for railway work.[40] There was thus practically a dual system, workable, in the opinion of Sir Andrew Clarke, "only by a species of compromise which was both unscientific and uneconomical."
As for interruptions by the Dervishes, these took the form of constant attacks both on the line under construction and on the workers. Several actions were fought, and at Tofrik, near Suakin, the British sustained a serious loss of life. Posts were erected as the work slowly progressed, and the bullet-proof train mentioned on page [76] was used for patrolling the line at night; but in face of all the difficulties experienced the work was definitely abandoned when only twenty miles of the intended railway had been completed. The troops were recalled in June, 1885, the railway material not used was brought back to England, and a line linking up Suakin (and Port Sudan) with Berber, via Atbara Junction, was not finally opened until 1906.