far--wheels

far--wheels

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.¹They 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.

¹ Diesel locomotives were introduced in 1956.

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