 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (March 2009) |
The Sudan Military Railway was a military railway constructed from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamed in 1896 and 1897 by Sirdar Horatio Kitchener in order to supply the Anglo-Egyptian army taking part in the Mahdist War. It was the predecessor line for the present-day Sudan Railway.
In Egypt, a rail line between Alexandria and Cairo had been completed in 1856, three years before work began on the Suez Canal. On May 14, 1858, a rail carriage ferry on this line played a decisive role in Egyptian history. Someone overlooked the normal precaution of securing the wheels of one carriage with chains (only one carriage crossed at a time), and this carriage fell into the Nile, drowning Prince Ahmed, heir apparent to the throne of Egypt. This resulted in Ahmed's brother Ismail being put on the throne.
Ismail saw himself as a builder. He took out huge loans and earned a lot of money from long-staple cotton, the production of which had quintupled, and the price quadrupled due to the American Civil War and its cotton famine. Among Ismail's projects were 910 miles (1,460 km) of new railroads, stretching 231 miles (372 km) southwards from Cairo to Assiut, and including the first line in the Sudan, to Khartoum. Ismail's railroad plans were to wait more than 30 years before they were realized.