Operations
Like the other members of the EAC Kenya utilizes the narrow gauge track gauge of 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) (metre gauge). The reason was that when the British started the railroad construction at the end of the nineteenth century they utilized material and workers from India. The Indian gauge and rolling stock was 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in).
The mainline of the KR is based on the original Uganda Railway. Its 930 km (578 mi) main track connected the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa to the port of Kisumu at Lake Victoria. Half way is the capital of Nairobi that was founded as a rail depot of the UR. The British added several branch lines as well as a link to Tanzania and a link to Uganda - the total system eventually had 2,778 km (1,726 mi) of track.
As of 2006 much of the overall railway system has been neglected or is in disrepair. Nevertheless the mainline from Mombasa to Kisumu is operative though at reduced speed. For passengers, the “Jumbo Kenya Deluxe” connects Nairobi and Mombasa. The fourteen hour overnight trip runs three times a week either eastbound or westbound on the single track. The “Port Florence Express” connects Nairobi with Kisumu.
KR also operates the Kenyan ferry system on Lake Victoria.
In 2010, KRX announced plans to construct a new station on Mombasa Road in Nairobi; part of a planned commuter network which would include an airport link.
Read more about this topic: Kenya Railways Corporation
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)