A pictorial history of the building of
the Uganda Railway 1896 - 1901

by Kevin Patience

The building of the Uganda Railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria was without doubt one of the finest examples of Victorian engineering in the late 19th century. George Whitehouse, the Chief Engineer, landed at Mombasa in December 1895 and was faced with the daunting task of completing a 600 mile line across the middle of East Africa with little idea of the enormous difficulties he would face both physically and politically in the next six years. Metre gauge was accepted as the most suitable in view of the terrain, and since Indian railways were well established, the sub-continent supplied all the early equipment and construction material together with thousands of tradesmen. 

Kenya or British East Africa as it was known in the 1890s was at the time regarded simply as a route to Uganda. There were no roads or towns and the route consisted of rough tracks over which missionaries, explorers and traders marched from the coast to the hinterland. Many of the traders' caravans conveyed not only merchandise but slaves for shipment to the Persian Gulf and India. Slavery had been forbidden by an act of Parliament in 1832 in British territories and this, in part with the desire to control the headwaters of the River Nile, was the reason for a projected railway. An initial survey of the route to Lake Victoria had been completed in 1893.