Sudan Railways Corporation

The Sudan Railways Corporation is the government institution responsible for operating the railway network in the country and transporting passengers and goods. It is a public corporation under the Ministry of Transport, and its headquarters are in the city of Atbara in River Nile State, known as the capital of the railway. Its network is considered one of the longest railway networks in Africa, with its lines extending to about 5,800 kilometres, of which about 4,578 kilometres are main lines, and it is a single-track network with a gauge of 1,067 millimetres.

Construction of the lines began in 1897 with a military line linking Wadi Halfa to Khartoum, then the line was handed over in 1900 to the Government of Sudan to become the nucleus of the railway network, most of which was completed before 1930. The Atbara–Port Sudan line extended between 1904 and 1906 to link the capital to the port, and it is the main corridor for export and import traffic, and the lines reached El Obeid in 1911, then Nyala in 1959 and Wau in 1962, with an alternative line linking Port Sudan to Khartoum via Kassala and Sinnar.

The Corporation is responsible for operating trains and maintaining lines, locomotives and wagons, and its main workshops are concentrated in Atbara, with auxiliary workshops in Khartoum and Port Sudan, and its administration is distributed across regions including the Northern, Eastern, Central and Western. In the 1950s the Corporation began replacing its steam locomotives with diesel locomotives, and the replacement was completed on the main lines in the early 1960s, while steam locomotives continued to work for a period on the light-rail branch lines. Among the network's most recent extensions are the Al-Mujlad–Abu Jabrah line in 1995 to serve oil transport, and the line linking Merowe Dam to Al-Ban station in 2002.

(Sources: Railway Gazette International — Sudan Railways Corporation profile; Wikipedia encyclopedia — rail transport in Sudan; Areeq encyclopedia — Sudan Railways Corporation)

— Editorial Team