Far Wheels Charles S. Small
Railhead Publications
Canton OH 44706
1986
ISBN 0-912113-31-6
2 Ferrovie Eritree
Even though there is no unanimity of opinion, few will dispute that
the shores of the Red Sea are the leading contenders for the dubious distinction
of being the hottest place on earth.
Trunk airlines avoid the region and most travelers
by ship pass through the Red Sea with only a cursory glance at the barren
desert like shoreline which shimmers in the waves of heat. This sea has
been, from time immemorial, a highway to the East. Centuries before the
Suez Canal the ancient Egyptians had connected the Red Sea with the Mediterranean
by means of a canal to the Nile. Few chose to tarry along this highway
for al the riches lay beyond its borders. With the exception of the pearl
fisheries at Khamaran Island and the salt deposits of Saleh, there was
nothing to divert the voyager destined for Punt or Ophir.
The eastern shore, one side of the Arabian Peninsula,
is virtually closed to all non Moslems, except for a handful of oil men
and commercial travelers. Jeddah, the port for the holy city of Mecca,
Hodeida, and Mocha in the Yemen, are Arab cities drowsing in the lethargy
of centuries. The western shore, where temperatures of 168 degrees Fahrenheit
have been recorded, is a barren waste that comprises the coast line of
Egypt, the Sudan, Eritrea and French Somali land. There is nothing to attract
the casual tourist to the ports: Port Sudan, Massaua, Assab and Djibouti,
except, perhaps the perverse distinction of visiting a place that no one
wants to see.
These ports exist to serve a plateau which lies
to the west at an altitude of 3,000 to 8,000 feet. Here, on the plateau,
the tropical sun is tempered by the altitude and with adequate rainfall
crops are produced for export. From three of the four ports narrow gauge
railroads cross the sandy desert and climb the escarprnent to serve this
agricultural economy.
At Port Sudan there is a 3 foot 6 inch gauge line
with over 2,000 miles of trackage which serves with the prosperous aplomb
of a typical British colonial system. The goal is the fertile triangle
between the White and Blue Niles which lies 250 miles west of the Red Sea.
This system, with an operating surplus of nearly a million pounds, carries
over 2,000,000 passengers and more than 1,300,000 tons of
Two R440 class Mallets smoke their
way across the causeway which connects the Island of Talud, on which the
Port of Massaua is located, and the mainland.
on the second story of an old building overlooking the port. The tables
are out on a balcony from which one can watch the languid switching in
the port area and what maritime traffic there might be stirring.
The shrimps here are the best in the world, for they come to your table
minutes after they have left the Red Sea. After the shrimps, the spaghetti,
which you take for nourishment, is cooked precisely, with loving care.
It is characteristic of Massaua that the proprietor is a former electrician
and one starts the fan on the balcony by twisting two live wires together.
At the end of the causeway which connects the Islands
of Massaua and Tallud there is a cafe where, when the sun has gone
down, one meets one's friends at the sidewalk tables. The swarms of flies,
and the humid atmosphere which makes every movement an effort, only heighten
the enjoyment of a cold glass of Melotti beer at this oasis.
In 1887 the Italians commenced the construction
of a 75 centimeter (29.5 inches) gauge railroad from Massaua to Asmara.
The gauge was changed to the Italian narrow gauge standard of 95 centimeters
in 1900. They reached Ghinda in 1904., but it was not until 1911, twenty-five
years after construction had commenced that they finally conquered the
escarpment and reached Asmara. Their goal was 73.09 miles from Massaua
and 7,143 feet above sea. level. The Ferrovie Eritree is one of the spectacular
mountain railroads of the world.
There are two ways of seeing the most interesting
part of the line. The first is to ride the steam hauled passenger train
which takes ten hours for the Massaua-Asmara trip. This method is recommended
only for the hardiest. The Mallet type tank engine burns soft coal and
the passenger cars have hard wooden seats and are crammed with the locals,
who betray little familiarity with soap and water. It is a. magnificent
trip up the hill complete with smoke, cinders, exhaust beats and the high-pitched
squeak of the continental type steam whistle, all in the best tradition.
An effete method of accomplishing the same objective
is to ride on one of the littorinas. These are Fiat rail cars built
in the 1935-1937 period and equipped with powerful diesel engines at each
end. They seat twenty-eight passengers and contain, a bit abaft of amidships,
a bar dispensing warm beer and sticky soft drinks. This amenity is not
to be regarded lightly in the Red Sea heat. These cars make the run in
three hours and forty-five minutes and they are usually on time. From the
front seat you can get an unimpeded engineer's view of the line.
The rail car departs from a halt just outside the
port gates on the Island of Massaua. It crosses the causeway leading to
the Island of Tallud and stops again at the main station. The next stop
is a few hundred yards further on for passengers who have walked over from
the CIAAO Hotel. The final Massaua stop is on the mainland side of the
causeway leading from the Island of Tallud. While crossing this causeway
you can look back and see the white buildings silhouetted against the blue
sky. At this distance Massaua looks clean and inviting.
At this last halt three Eritrean policemen in British
style battle dress board the car. They poke their Lee-Enfield .303 rifles
out of an open window and slam home a full clip. If you are not the nervous
type the click of the bolt as a live cartridge is pushed home into the
chamber adds spice to the trip. The precautions are taken against the shifta
– the Amharic word for bandit.
The shifta started as local patriots against
the Italian occupation, and as such, their activities were encouraged.
When the Italians had been driven out they continued against the British
Administration, for by this time they had come thoroughly to enjoy their
lives of crime. They are still in business today and their only concession
to independence is to stop killing the people they rob. They are principally
active on the highway and usually take all their victim's clothes,
leaving him to drive into town in his birthday suit. They have been known
to hold up trains, which gives this trip a somewhat Wild West flavor.
The first section is 18.2 miles from Massaua to
Mai Atal, typical coastal desert where the only vegetation is the thorn-bush.
Some of these East African deserts are horrible in their desolation, especially
in those regions where one finds the charred lava beds, sulfur yellow and
blood red sandstone. But this stretch is often pretty, and after an occasional
rain can be quite beautiful with the thorn-bushes decked out in green and
yellow.
The rail car runs at a steady twenty-five miles
per hour and the wind whips across one's face like an oxyacetylene flame,
and even the warm beer served aboard furnishes temporary relief for parched
throats and lips. Six miles out of Massaua you start up a 1.7 per cent
grade and by the time you have crossed the dry river bed at Dogali on a.
thirteen arch brick and masonry bridge the grade has steepened to 2.8 per
cent. At Mai Atal, where the aerial ropeway crosses the railroad, you are
551 feet above sea level.
Shortly after leaving Mai Atal, the highway and
the railroad part company, and the railroad enters a broad valley alongside
the dry bed of a river, or what is focally called a torrent. Such channels
are dry most of the year, except when it rains on the plateau, when a wall
of water rushes down the precipitous grade and Rings itself into the sea.
In a few days it has dried up and gone.
In this valley one gets a feeling of extreme remoteness.
Herds of camels nibble at the leaves of the thorn-bushes and somehow escape
impaling their lips on the thorns. As they move they raise a cloud of dust
that remains suspended in the still air. The flat floor of the valley contains
native farms where corn struggles against the drought. In the distance
the mountains arc obscured with a. blue heat haze which gives a sense of
unreality and blurs the horizon. This is harsh and brutal country and inspires
either to hatred or wonder.
You are returned to reality as the operator pneumatically
shifts gears and the twin diesel engines growl as the car squeals around
the 328 foot radius curves on the 3 per cent grade.
The two saturated steam R440 class Mallets
have a tonnage limit of 126 metric tons, each, to Mai Atal where this photo
was taken. To Ghinda it is 81 tons each, and to the summit just before
Asmara, it is 71 tons. The summit grade is 3.5%. The altitude is
7303 feet above and 73.09 miles beyond the shore of the Red Sea.
A short distance from Damas you encounter the first
and second of the thirty tunnels on the line as the train winds in and
out of the lava rock formations that make up the slope which you are climbing.
You realize that the twenty-five years for the construction passed quickly
when you see the tunnels and deep cuts which were hacked out of the
rock by muscle, sledge hammer, drill steel and black powder. There is a
short stretch of downgrade into Damas station and then the climb is resumed
at 2.6 per cent.
The valley as you approach Ghinda narrows until
it is less than a hundred yards wide. After three tunnels in quick succession
you cross and recross the Dongollo Torrent on six closely spaced bridges.
Suddenly, as the valley reaches its narrowest point, it bursts out into
a small plain and you roll into Ghinda station 43.I5 miles from the coast
and 3,258 feet above sea level.
The transformation is dramatic because of its suddenness.
All at once life becomes bearable for the altitude has robbed the sun of
its sting. The vegetation undergoes a complete change for the thorn-bush
is gone and is replaced by bushes which might be found anywhere in the
temperate zone. Even in the dry season the Ghinda plain is green.
At the station the three policemen get off and return
to the coast on the railcar which is waiting on the siding. The operator
takes a few minutes to get a new set of train orders and to gossip with
the loafers assembled on the platform. It is evident that the arrival and
departure of the littorina is watched with special interest for these cars
carry only the elite in first and second class. The ordinary folks travel
third class in the steam train. They are not upset by this class distinction
for, being in no hurry, and only infrequently having the price of a ticket,
the ten-hour trip gives them the opportunity properly to savor the journey.
There is no color bar or racial discrimination in Eritrea, and for a land
so recently released from foreign rule there is surprisingly little offensive
nationalism.
With a new set of orders the operator boards the
car and with him come three new policemen. The policemen are all over six
feet tall and carry their loaded rifles with careless ease.
From Ghinda to Asmara the grade is a steady 3.5 per cent
uncompensated for the z 3 o foot radius curves. The largest 0-4-4-0 Mallet
tank engines have a rating of only ninety tons in this section. The older
0-4-4-0 tank engines can only drag fifty-five tons up the incline.
From Ghinda to Nefasit through Embatkalla the line
climbs through a valley with towering hills on both sides. The grade turns
and twists as it conforms to the contours of the slopes. There are five
tunnels in this short stretch.
When you reach Nefasit it appears as if the railroad
could go no farther. Ahead is an escarpment almost 2,000 feet high.
You can see the highway ascend the face by a series of hairpin bends
and a grade far too steep for a train. Yet the builders found a route which
climbs at a steady 3.5 percent, 185 feet per mile, and the grade is not
arneliorated or compensated for the sharp curves.
In this section you lose all sense of direction
as you wind in and out of twenty tunnels, many of which contain reverse
curves. Looking out the window of the car, you see either a sheer drop
of over a. thousand feet or several levels of track below on the mountain's
face. The tunnels are numbered, and to increase your confusion there are
two numbered sixteen. As you climb, it becomes noticeably cooler, and if
you are on the afternoon train, it is quite cold on the shady side of the
mountain.
Arboroba station is carved out of the rock and it
is the last before the terminal. There are three spiral loops and a high
stone viaduct, on a sharp curve, on the final stretch to the summit which
is 7,303 feet in altitude and 1.5 miles from Asmara. The descending grade
to Asmara station is a modest 3.0 per cent and the station is 160 feet
lower than the summit.
Certainly for Africa, Asmara is a beautiful city
and in great contrast to Massaua. Its latitude places it in the tropics
and makes the days warm and pleasant. The altitude makes the nights
cool and crisp and lends a crystalline sparkle to the air. Here, on a Hat
high plateau, were lavished a11 the arts of building for which the Italians
are renowned. Wide streets bordered by stately trees are flanked by smart-looking
shops, theaters, and the inevitable Italian cafes that produce little cups
of coffee from portentous chromium plated contraptions. The outer fringes
of the town abound with villas, guarded by tall slim eucalyptus trees,
whose gardens are a profusion of brightly colored Flowers. Even the utilitarian
railroad shops have their share of this riot of color. Asmara is a tribute
to the Italian stonemason and gardener.
One can understand why the Italians were so successful
in Eritrea when one realizes that many parts of it are very similar to
Italy. The Italians were familiar with a harsh land with mountainous terrain
where the sky is always blue and the heat and the dust give a peculiar
tang to the atmosphere. In so many parts of Africa, and especially the
British areas where the architecture comes from a cold climate, the buildings
look alien and out of place. When one sees the Italian farms in the narrow
valleys between Asmara and Cheren or between Decamare and Nefasit, one
realizes that the builders were right at home here. As they were at home
with the terrain, so with the inhabitants. There was not the wide gulf
between the Eritreans, who are of Nilotic stock, and the swarthy Italians,
as exists in the other parts of Africa between the Negroid Bantu and the
Northern European. Many of the early Italian settlers married Eritreans
and formed a class which bridged the two civilizations.
Eritrea must have been a pleasant backwater in the
days before Mussolini decided to create the second Roman Empire. Even this
insane folly was not wholly bad. Asmara, which had been a dusty colonial
village, was rebuilt into the imposing city that it is today. Over fifty
thousand artisans
Near Asmara and the summit of the
line the daily steam hauled mixed train struggles up the 3%% grade over
a typical Italian-built stone bridge.
were imported to build power plants, roads and other public works which
had main today. The Fascist overlords were insufferable and well merited
their defeat and expulsion, but the peasant class toiled as they did at
home. What is left of Eritrea today is a monument to these workers who
did not suffer from the disease of most white men in Africa, which is that
they are too proud to work.
Unfortunately, today, both the town and the railroad
shops are but a hollow shell. The apparent prosperity is skin deep. Asmara
is only a false front and behind the impressive facade there is no solid
prosperity. The prosperity vanished with the subsidized economy at
the time of the Italian defeat.
The well equipped and neatly kept railroad shops
are a sad sight since the yard is littered with derelict locomotives. These
derelicts are not victims of dieselization, for, with the exception of
the rail cars, the entire line is steam-operated.1 They are
the victims of shrinking business and its attendant poverty. Of the sixty-four
locomotives in use at the peak of I938, some twenty-odd remain in running
condition. The bones of the other forty rust forlornly in the brilliant
sunshine, cannibalized to keep the others in steam.
The line reached Asmara in 1911 and continued slowly
westward toward the Sudan border. The high Hat plateau continues but a
short distance west of Asmara when broken mountainous country is again
encountered. At Cheren, the scene of the fiercest battle of the last war
in Eritrea., there is another spectacular stretch as the track descends
again through the Cheren Gorge to the hot and sandy desert region that
stretches to the Sudan border. By 1925 the line had reached Biscia and
it was the intention to continue westward to Tessenai where freight could
be interchanged with the Sudan Railway which had built their 3 foot 6 inch
gauge track to this point. The line to Tessenai was never built as the
Italians were occupied with their plans to conquer Ethiopia.
Switching was done at both
ends of the line by the R200 class 0-4-0Ts. Breda built this one, 2169
of 1927. The weight was 20 tons.
The 'littorina', the Italian word
for rail car has reached the next to the last level of the climb to the
summit which is located a short distance, off the photo,, on the
top track level. This 950 mm gauge car has a powerful Fiat diesel engine
at each end, both of which are used on the steeper grades.
R441-04 streaks across
the summit level just before Asmara. This class has 120% of the tonnage
rating of the R440 class.
This downhill passenger
train is headed by R442-56. This class were four cylinder simple expansion
engines whose tonnage rating was 150% of that of the older R440 class.
These locomotives weighed 48.2 metric tons.
The daily steam passenger
train for Massaua at the Asmara Station. The trip even downhill takes 10
hours. The Fiat rail car makes the trip in one third of this time. The
steam engines always proceed bunker first downhill to keep the crown sheet
covered with water.
As a part of this bold faced scheme of aggression, sixteen
new locomotives were purchased and twelve secondhand engines were obtained
from Sicily. Even with the new larger locomotives the railroad had a very
limited capacity. The new engines could only handle eight loaded cars between
Ghinda and Asmara and the older engines were limited to five. After
deducting the tare weight of the cars the useful tonnage was small indeed.
To carry the materials of war and to handle the materials for the enormous
building expansion at Asmara an aerial tramway or ropeway was constructed
from Massaua to Asmara. The ropeway marched to its destination in a straight
line scaling the mountain sides and leaping from crest to crest. It thus
spanned the gap with forty-nine miles of wires instead of the tortuous
seventy-three miles required by the railroad. In addition, a highway was
constructed which is a masterpiece of mountain engineering.
Ethiopia, its peasant army often only equipped with
spears, was beaten by the legions of Il Duce largely by use of modern weapons
which included aerial bombing and poison gas. By the end of I938 the railroad
and reached its zenith and was paralleled by the ropeway and the highway.
Asmara was aglitter with the preposterous uniforms of the Fascist bumblers
who kept telling themselves and the rest of the world that the second Roman
Empire was well under way.
By 1941 the house of cards had collapsed. A decisive
defeat had been inflicted by the British at the Battle of Cheren. It is
rather ironical when you visit the war cemeteries at Cheren and find that
the British dead were largely Indian troops and the Italian losses principally
their Eritrean askaris. Following this defeat the British South African
and East African troops swiftly occupied all of Eritrea. Requiring rail
and cars for the North African campaign the British Army ripped up the
track from Biscia to Agordat. Farther south in defeated Italian Somaliland
the entire railroad, which started from the coast at Mogadiscio, was dismantled
and carted off to Tunisia. Since this line was the same gauge as the Eritrean
line some of the locomotives saw service in both areas.
Today the aerial tramway lies idle. The carriers
sway futilely over the yawning abyss of the spans that leap from mountain
to mountain. Attempts to salvage it have been defeated by the high cost
of removal which today exceeds the value of the materials. The railroad,
now operated by the Imperial Ethiopian Government Railway and Ropeway Administration
in Eritrea, chugs apathetically up and down the 3.5 per cent grades.
With the few serviceable locomotives burning coal
imported from the United States at great cost and handicapped by the severe
grades, the line is hardly an economic proposition. There are no power
brakes, with the result that a brakeman must ride each car to set and release
the handbrakes. With this rudimentary braking system the downhill tonnage
is as severely limited as is the tonnage uphill.
There is brave talk of the improvements that will
result from diesel traction, but the fact is that the line is kept alive
only by stringent regulation of the more efficient trucks on the highway.
The idea that Massaua would be the Red Sea port for the lower Sudan is
a dream. Regardless of the economics of the proposal, the railroad of the
newly independent Sudan would not surrender to Ethiopia its long-hau1 traffic.
As an indication of the Sudanese feeling, their track from Malawiya to
Tessenai in Eritrea has been dismantled.
The motive power consists solely of tank engines.
There are now only two wheel arrangements in service, a group of
0-4-0s for switching and the mainline 0-4-4-0s. There are three classes
of mainline engines. The 440 Class of 1911 vintage are Mallet compounds,
and five of this group, which once numbered twenty-nine engines, survive.
The 441 Class originally were four-cylinder simple engines and there were
sixteen in the Class. Only one is left and this engine has been rebuilt
into a Mallet compound. Four of this Class were carted off to Libya in
1941, and only one was still in operation in I954. The 442 Class
comprised eight engines, all in existence in varying states of repair.
The heaviest engines on the system, they tipped the scales at 48.2 metric
tons in working order. They are Mallet compounds and both sets of cylinders
are equipped with piston valves. On the number plates, which are of cast
brass, the number is prefixed by the letter 'R' which is the abbreviation
for Scartemenfo Ridotto, narrow gauge.
The most interesting of the Eritrean motive power
types is now extinct. For the connoisseur of weird and wonderful
mechanical devices of the Heath Robinson or Rube Goldberg variety, there
is no greater treat than to be confronted with a Klien-Linder locomotive.
Only the bones remain at Asmara of five 0-8-0s built on the Klien-Linder
patent system by Ansaldo in Genoa in 1922. These engines had outside frames
and cranks. The driving axle was inside a subsidiary axle which connected
the wheels. The drive was through a ball and socket joint on the inner
axle. A pin through the ball drove the outer axle. The internal diameter
of the outer axle was sufficiently large to allow radial movement and a
subsidiary gadget allowed the axles to slide longitudinally with respect
to each other. A11 of this blacksmith's nightmare was for the purpose of
allowing an eight-coupled engine to traverse the sharp curves. Although
the first and last pair of drivers had radial motion these engines were
far harder on the track than the Mallets.
For those who are interested in the more desolate
places in the world there are the remains of a sixty centimeter gauge railroad
to be seen at Mersa Fatima, a port south of Massaua. The port and the railroad
were built by the Italians early in the century to tap a potash deposit
some fifty miles from the coast. The line ended at Kululli in the midst
of an appalling desolation of treeless and waterless desert. The railroad
was killed by the depression and odd bits of it now lie scattered on scrapheaps
all over Eritrea.
The locomotives on the Ferrovie Eritree always face
in the same direction, to keep the crownsheets covered with water on the
steep grade. There are few railroads in the world that can offer a 7,300
foot change in altitude in 73 miles – an engineering achievement of the
first magnitude.
