Eritrean Railway - in Operation

In Operation

The railway was reasonably busy for such a small line; in 1935, carrying large quantities of supplies for the Italian war effort in Ethiopia, the line saw 30 trains daily, while by 1965 the line was carrying nearly half a million passengers a year as well as 200,000 tons of freight. Things went downhill progressively from there. Improvements, to the road from Massawa to Asmara and to the trucks and buses that used it, began to take traffic away from the railway.

Until 1941, the railway was Italian controlled, but the fortunes of war allowed the British to take control. After 1942 the railway (damaged during the British occupation and by Italian guerrillas) was abandoned from Agordat to Biscia.

In 1942 the British moved some diesel locomotives and materials to Eritrea when they dismantled the Railway Mogadiscio-Villabruzzi of Italian Somalia. In 1944 the British (as a war compensation) dismantled the Italian-built Asmara-Massawa Cableway that supplemented the railway as a means of transportation inland.

In 1953 Eritrea was joined to Ethiopia in Federation as the British pulled out, giving Ethiopia a coastline, but starting off 40 years of unrest and eventually war.

The 1950s and 1960s were successful years for the railway, but the 1970s saw the railway fall more and more out of use as the unrest intensified, and in 1975 the railway was destroyed by the ruling Derg regime in Ethiopia. Much of the infrastructure was destroyed during the following years of war, and both sides used materials salvaged from the railway for fortification and other purposes.