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

by Kevin Patience

Nature played havoc with construction. The workers were plagued by swarms of locusts, mosquitoes and flies, and mules and cattle died from the bite of the tsetse fly. Armies of caterpillars covered the rails and caused the locomotives to slip and man-eating lions took a liking to human flesh. Rhinoceros attacked the locomotives, determined to derail the intruding steam monsters, while giraffes caught their necks in telegraph wires and elephants knocked over the poles. The physical difficulties included the erection of hundreds of bridges and viaducts, and the carriage of the entire railway construction gang, materials and rolling stock down the side of the Rift Valley, on a forty-five degree incline that would not have been out of place in the Swiss Alps.

Accidents both natural and manmade accounted for numerous lives, while tropical diseases ravaged the workers and compounded the problem. The ever rising costs were met by cries of alarm in the British Parliament, and culminated in the appearance of a poem in the national press that ended with the words 't'is naught but a lunatic line'. 

The railway continues to operate to this day and is an outstanding tribute to those whose labours completed what was considered an impossible task, and whose descendants still reside in the country today.