by george matthews
In 1926/27 the Uganda Railway was replaced first by the Kenya and Uganda Railways in 1926 and then by the Kenya and Uganda Railways and Harbours (KURH) Corporation in 1927, when the powers-that-be placed Mombasa Harbour into the same company as the railways.The Corporation was actually the East African Railways and Harbours. It included the rail and harbours in Tanganyika. It was integrated by building the link between Kenya and Tanganyika from Voi to Moshi (dating from the first world war) and then from the Tanga-Moshi line to Dar es Salaam - I took the linking train more than once between Nairobi and Dar. I believe it is defunct now. There was also the train ferry from Kisumu to Mwanza - and possibly from Jinja - which linked rail freight between the systems of Kenya and Tanganyika. I think the break up of the EAR was the main loss when the East African Community broke up instead of becoming a true Federation as was intended by the British. One function of the ferries was to coordinate freight vehicles between the Tanganyika lines and the Kenya-Uganda lines. Peak freight traffic occurred at different times of year, so switching freight vehicles between the two systems was valuable. There was also some domestic trade between the two systems. I believe the rail ferries no longer run.
The Nairobi-Dar link functioned when carriages were added to the Nairobi-Mombasa train and detached at Voi. They were then taken along the link to Moshi where they waited several hours and were then attached to a train going to Dar es Salaam - with some carriages detached at Korogwe for Tanga. There were two nights of sleep on this journey. I travelled in both directions.
On one journey there was a track fault on the Moshi-Voi route. The eastbound and westbound trains were halted on either side of the fault. The passengers walked across the gap and swapped trains. On this occasion the westbound train arrived in Voi much too late to meet the train going to Nairobi. A locomotive was found to take the short train onwards. I remember that I saw some of the animals in the National Park, normally hidden at night. The train arrived in Nairobi in the afternoon instead of in the morning.
I would expect that the eastbound train arrived in Moshi in time to connect up with the train to Dar, avoiding the long period of waiting in Moshi station.