Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

To-day the cars move as smoothly over those tracks as they do over those of Egypt, and give that country regular connection with the Sudan. There is now a train de luxe connecting Khartum with Wady Halfa equipped with sleeping and dining cars.

The sleepers are divided into compartments about seven feet square with two berths to each. There is an aisle along the side of the car from which the compartments are entered, and each of the latter is large enough to enable one to have a wicker chair in it in addition to the berths. Every little room has an electric fan and is lighted by electricity.

The dining-car service is good and comparatively cheap. The meals consist of a cup of tea and some crackers brought in by a Nubian porter at daybreak; a breakfast in the dining car at eight o’clock; a table d’hôte luncheon at one, and a dinner in the evening.

In riding over the Sudan military road we stopped for a time at Atbara, where the Black Nile from Abyssinia flows into the main stream. Here is the famous bridge built by Americans upon orders given by General Kitchener. The contract was first offered to the English, but they were not able to build the bridge in the time required, so the Americans took the job and finished it. Atbara is now an important division point where the road across the desert to the Red Sea branches off. As we stopped at the station our engine struck me as looking familiar. I walked to the front of the train and examined it. Sure enough, it was a Baldwin, with the name “Philadelphia” standing out in the full blaze of the Nubian sun. Later on, when I crossed the Black Nile over the steel bridge put up by our builders, I felt that I was not out of touch with home, after all. I was being hauled by an American engine over an American bridge, though I was in the heart of the Nubian Desert more than a thousand miles up the Nile. The thought makes one proud of our American enterprise and mechanical genius.

At Atbara I learned a great deal about the road, which starts here on its three hundred and thirty mile journey through the Nubian Desert to the Red Sea. This little town might be called one of the railway centres of the Sudan. Lying at the junction of the two chief railways, it has the principal railroad offices and shops and is the home of the director, with whom I had a long talk about his line to the Red Sea. He had a part in building the road and is now its manager. We first visited the shops, which cover two or three acres of sandy waste. They are great sheds with walls of galvanized iron and roofs of iron and plate glass. I saw many locomotives, cars and steel ties, and telegraph poles outside. Going in, I found all sorts of railway repair and construction work under way. The machinists were a mixture of whites, blacks, and yellows, representing a half-dozen different nations and tribes. There were British overseers, Greek and Italian mechanics, some Nubian blacksmiths, and many Nubian boys taking a sort of manual-training course in order that they may serve as locomotive engineers, under machinists and trackmen. The machinery is of modern make and the shops are well equipped.

As we walked among the lathes and planing machines the director pointed out to me some of the peculiarities of the wear and tear of the desert upon railway materials.

“Here,” said he, as he pointed to the wheel of an American locomotive, in which was cut a groove so deep and wide that I could lay my three fingers in it, “is an example of how the sands ruin our car wheels. The flint-like grains from the desert blow over the rails, and as the cars move they grind out the steel as though they were emery powder. Consequently, the life of a wheel is short, and we have to cut down its tire every few months. Moreover, the sand gets into the bearings, and there is a continual wearing which necessitates almost constant repair.”

“How about your sandstorms? Are they serious obstacles to traffic?”

“At times, yes. They come with such violence that they cover the tracks; they cloud the sun so that when you are in one you cannot see your hand before your face. They often spring up afar off, so that you can watch them coming. At such times the sand gets into everything and cuts its way through all parts of the machinery.

“Another thing we have to contend with,” continued the railway manager, “is the extraordinary dryness of the air, which shrinks our rolling stock so that it has to be tightened up again and again. One of our passenger cars will shrink as much as eighteen inches in one wall alone, and we have to put in extra boards to fill up the gaps. The same is true of all sorts of woodwork.