continent imposes its own style on the ways that people get about. Not only the geological features but also the peoples and their cultures rub off on the railway tradition of a country.
In Africa there were no wheels before the colonial era. This was a serious drawback for economic development because legs, though ingenious and very adaptable, are not as swift g https://bmmagazine.co.uk/ or smooth as wheels. Carrying everything on the backs of animals or the heads of porters meant that good could be transported across rough country, but laboriously.
When the European powers saw the potential for raw materials in Africa they immediately set about constructing what must have seen like impossibly long and difficult constructions that would enable them to lay down steels rails and make iron wheels run smoothly along them. In some cases they considered navigable rivers but the southern parts of the continent did not lend themselves to river navigation because of rapids and unsteady water flows, so railways became the preferred mode.
To get from ports to remote hinterlands where resources like gold and diamonds had been discovered engineers had to construct incredibly long, smooth excavations, lay down secure beds of gravel with wooden sleepers at close intervals on them and then nail steels rails securely so that heavy rolling stock could run along them without being derailed. To make their task even more challenging rough terrain had to be traversed. Valleys and mountains were crossed, not to speak of rivers, swamps and what must have seemed like endless plains.
The unique challenges face by South African railway engineers in colonial times were to cross mountain ranges and deserts. Wagons drawn by oxen had negotiated steep slopes because the legs of oxen can step over obstacles but all obstacles had to be cleared away before trains could traverse the rails that were laid from the coastal city of Durban, over the massive Drakensberg mountain range to the high veld beyond.
From Cape Town in the south the route had to proceed northwards over empty deserts. Though flat, the Great Karroo is expansive and dry. Th
