Train Travel

New dawn for Uganda to Mombasa train

A South African consortium plans to take over the so called "Lunatic Express", once the British pride of East Africa, and reverse its decline

THROUGH the window of the Lunatic Express, you see the desert give way to the splendour of the Great Rift Valley. From Mombasa, in Kenya, one of the most famous routes of the British Empire follows a single track to Lake Victoria towards Kampala, the Ugandan capital.

This railway, which was once the pride of East Africa, gained its nickname from the sceptics who thought it expensive and foolhardy to build a line through this difficult empty terrain.

Now it might better describe the passengers who are willing not only to put up with last-minute cancellations and mammoth delays but also thieves at the windows. This, however, could be about to change.

Next month a South African consortium is to take over the railway. Their brief is to reverse its decline. They plan to diminish the 9,000-strong workforce by two thirds and invest in excess of £150 million in order to restore past glory to the line credited with opening up the continent.

Travellers hope it will retain some of its colonial charm. The tradition of dinner being announced with a four-tone chime. Waiters who in white jackets serve first-class passengers in a restaurant car that could have featured in an Agatha Christie novel. Now the leather seats are scuffed and splitting at the seams. Most cabins have no electricity. Passengers make do with torches.

James Kangere, a steward for 25 years, sits down after a long shift. There is a three-hour delay leaving Nairobi — the restaurant car had derailed — it is now means past 1am. The coaches are in a very bad state. Sometimes there are cockroaches. He bemoans the sorry state of the train..

It all started during the 1990s when, corrupt deals were struck and Kenya Railways paid too much for fuel and other services. Lengths of rail and areas of land were sold off resulting in the end of passenger services to Uganda in 1996.

Today’s first-class passengers are mostly backpackers thrilled to be stepping back into history. They watch the sun rise over thick acacia scrub, whilst demolishing bacon and eggs and spotting giraffes in the distance. As the train judders and lurches, they swap stories of broken lavatories and unwelcome nocturnal visitors.

One young lady from Southampton University once woke to find a shadow looming over her. An intruder clinging to the side of the rattling train managed to force his head and arms through the window as he searched for her bags..

The train shudders to a stop some 100 miles (161km) from Mombasa because a freight train has derailed, preventing all movement.

It is a sorry time for one of the great engineering feats of the British Empire. This line once played a central role in the development of East Africa. Nairobi was no more than a watering hole before it arrived. It was so expensive to build — it took six years from commencement in 1896, and killed many thousands of imported Indian and African labourers — that the Foreign Office encouraged white settlers in order that costs could be recouped by carrying agricultural produce and passengers.

Many of those who died were struck by disease. Some were killed by the feared man-eating lions of Tsavo. These predators would bring construction to a halt when hundreds of workers fled in fear.

Now when unscheduled stops are made, local children arrive at the trackside to look at the train or play with passengers.

The initial reaction to these delays of “This is all part of the charm — a real sense of adventure,” later in the day slips away. People had been drifting away at each halt, hitching rides from buses, lorries or matatus, the minibuses that serve as local taxis.

Those of us stuck on the train as night falls are the unlucky ones. The 13 hour journey has taken 24. We finally hitch a ride from Mariakani to Mombasa. By the time that the Lunatic Express ends its journey in Mombasa it will be a ghost train.