A start was made with the work on May 15, 1897, the staff which had been engaged on the Nile Valley line to Kerma returning to Wady Halfa in order to take the desert line in hand. By the end of July, 115 of the 232 miles of line had been completed, and Sir Herbert Kitchener, utilising the railway which had already been constructed to Kerma, then sent a force along the Nile Valley to effect the capture of Abu Hamed. This was accomplished on August 7, and the constructors of the desert line were thus enabled to resume their work with greater security and even accelerated speed. Abu Hamed was reached on October 31, 1897, the two extreme points of the great Nile bend being thus brought into communication by a direct line of railway. The construction of the 232 miles of track had been accomplished in five and a half months, notwithstanding the fact that the work was carried on during the hottest time of the year. An average length of a mile and a quarter of line was laid per day, while on one day in October a maximum of three and a quarter miles was attained. So well, too, had the work been done that trains carrying 200 tons of stores, drawn by engines weighing, without tender, fifty tons, were taken safely across the desert at a speed of twenty-five miles per hour.
From Abu Hamed the line was at once pushed on in the direction of Berber, and its value from a military point of view was speedily to be proved. Receiving information, towards the end of 1897, that the Dervishes were planning an attack on Berber, Sir Herbert Kitchener sent to Cairo for a Brigade of British troops to join with the Egyptian forces then at Berber in opposing this advance, and the Brigade arrived in January, 1898, having travelled by the desert railway not only to Abu Hamed, but to a point twenty miles farther south, which then constituted railhead. Early in March the Anglo-Egyptian Army was concentrated between Berber and the Atbara river, and the battle of Atbara, fought in the following month, led to the complete annihilation of the forces sent by the Khalifa to drive the Egyptians out of Berber.
There was known to be still an army of 50,000 men in Omdurman, at the command of the Khalifa; but it was considered desirable, before any further advance was made by the Anglo-Egyptian forces, to await not only the completion of the railway to the Atbara but the rise, also, of the Nile, so that the river would be available for the bringing up of steamers and gunboats to take part in the attack on Omdurman.
Once more, therefore, Lieut. Girouard and his staff had to make the most strenuous efforts, and these were again so successful that the line was carried to the Atbara early in July. It was of the greatest service in facilitating the concentration of an Anglo-Egyptian Army, 22,000 strong, at Wad Hamed, and the victory of Omdurman, on September 2, 1898—when 20,000 of the enemy were killed or wounded—followed by the occupation of Khartoum, meant the overthrow of the Mahdi, the final reconquest of the Sudan, and the gaining of a further great triumph in the cause of civilisation.
In the account of these events which he gives in volume three of the "History of the Corps of the Royal Engineers," Colonel Sir Charles M. Watson says concerning this ultimate outcome of a rebellion which had lasted, altogether, for a period of eighteen years:—
Lord Kitchener, of course, by the skill and determination with which he conducted the operations to a successful termination, deserves the principal credit for the happy conclusion of the campaign. But it must not be forgotten that a large part of the work was carried out by the officers of the Royal Engineers, especially those who had charge of the construction and maintenance of that railway without which, it is fair to say, the campaign could not have been conducted at all.
The final triumph was the more gratifying because, although the desert railway had contributed so materially thereto, dependence upon it had not been without an element of serious risk which cannot be told better than in the words of Lord Cromer, in his book on "Modern Egypt":—
The interval which elapsed between the occupation of Abu Hamed and the final advance on Khartoum was a period of much anxiety. Sir Herbert Kitchener's force depended entirely on the desert railway for its supplies. I was rather haunted with the idea that some European adventurer, of the type familiar in India a century and more ago, might turn up at Khartoum and advise the Dervishes to make frequent raids across the Nile below Abu Hamed with a view to cutting the communication of the Anglo-Egyptian force with Wady Halfa. This was unquestionably the right military operation to have undertaken; neither, I think, would it have been very difficult of accomplishment. Fortunately the Dervishes ... failed to take advantage of the opportunity presented to them. To myself it was a great relief when the period of suspense was over. I do not think that the somewhat perilous position in which Sir Herbert Kitchener's army was undoubtedly placed for some time was at all realised by the public in general.
Within about two months of the battle of Omdurman the plans were made for a further extension of the railway from Atbara to Khartoum, and Khartoum North was reached on the last day of 1899. The construction of a bridge over the Blue Nile subsequently allowed of trains running direct into Khartoum.
To-day this same railway has been carried a distance of 430 miles south of Khartoum. It continues along the Blue Nile to Sennah, where it turns to the westward, crosses the White Nile at Kosti, and has its terminus at El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan Province. What this means is that an enormous expanse of territory has been opened up both to civilisation and to commercial development.