Friends of the Rail Forum

Sudan goods train derails, kills 14
Mon May 5, 2008 9:40am EDT

KHARTOUM, May 5 (Reuters) - A goods train derailed in Sudan's West Kordofan state killing 14 people and injuring 28 others, the railways authority said on Monday.

The reason for the accident a day earlier was unclear. Senior officials from the authority were travelling to the remote area to begin investigations.

A statement said the train was carrying students from the university of West Kordofan who were among the victims but did not specify why they were on the goods train.

A number of the train's cars derailed and flipped over, local newspapers said on Monday.

Sudan's trains are old and need spare parts prohibited by U.S. sanctions imposed on Africa's largest nation. Washington has accused Sudan of sponsoring terror.

China is upgrading one part of the network, from Port Sudan to the capital Khartoum.

At the height of Sudan's five-year-old conflict in its western Darfur region, thousands of Darfuris travelled in goods trains to Khartoum seeking refuge from rape, pillage and murder.

In Sudan's south, land mines and fighting after decades of civil war has undermined the rail network. (Reporting by Opheera McDoom)

Reuters

What trains do they run in that part? Engines?

Trains are few and far between and it's years since I've actually seen one in Sudan. In the 1980s when I regularly used to drive across the desert from Kosti to El Obeid I would stay near the railway line to avoid getting lost, and I've often spent the whole day grinding through the sand in second gear and not seen a single train.

All I can say is that they are diesels. The very old ones (probably not running any more, but who knows?) were built by the Vulcan Works in UK, but I don't know about the more modern ones. At some point (late '90s? early 2000s?) South African diesels were there - I remember raising it as an advocacy issue while the war was still going on in southern Sudan, as these locos were hauling military trains.

If I manage to get to Atbara on my next trip to northern Sudan I might find out more.

Just checked my archives. In August 2004 I wrote in my monthly briefing about Sudan:

John wrote:President Thabo Mbeki stated that South African national railway company Spoornet would supply locomotives to Sudan to help transport food aid to Darfur. Sixteen Spoornet class 33.000 locomotives have already been working in Sudan for some years, and they were joined by six class 35.200 locomotives in mid-2003. South African railways operates to the same 1.067m gauge as Sudan.

There is only one railway line that goes into southern Sudan, from Babanusa in the north (on the line from El Obeid to Darfur) to Wau in the south. Military trains supplied the government garrison in Wau. In the 1980s the bridge at Aweil was blown by the southern liberation movement so trains could only get that far and the supplies had to be transported onwards by other means. Military trains moved at walking pace with a big escort on the ground which included mounted militia (the foreruners of the janjawiid now operating in Darfur). These horsemen rode ahead of the train and cleared a swathe up to 30 kms wide, destroying everything in their path, looting cattle, killing and abducting civilians. Whenever there was news of an impending train, the UN and the aid agencies would evacuate all their personnel and close their operations within that area, and civilians would flee.

I recall asking contacts in the UN in Sudan to try and get the numbers of the locomotives working the military trains into southern Sudan. The way they were being used was clearly colluding with war crimes and crimes against humanity, and if it could be shown that they were Spoornet locomotives then pressure could be put on the South African government to withdraw them. Unfortunately the UN did not possess any railfans amongst its monitors on the ground and nothing came of it!

Very interesting John. Something not to lose historically.

FATAL SUDANESE DERAILMENT
Friday, 16 May 2008

At least 15 people, most of them university students, are reported to have been killed and 28 injured after a train derailed on 4 May in western Sudan. Twenty carriages came off the rails near Al-Foula in South Kordofan while most passengers were asleep. Sudanese authorities have discounted sabotage. An al Jazeera reporter quoted a railway official as saying the accident was caused by a "technical fault".

Railways Africa