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The Uganda Railway, colloquially known as the Lunatic Express or the Lunatic Line, is a railway system and former railway company dating to the colonial period. The line links the interiors of Uganda and Kenya with the Indian Ocean at Mombasa in Kenya. ==Origins== Built during the Scramble for Africa, the Uganda Railway was the one genuinely strategic railway to be constructed in tropical Africa at that time. 2,498 workers would die during its construction. The Uganda Railway was named after its ultimate destination, for its entire original 660-mile length actually lay in what would become Kenya. Construction began at the port city of Mombasa in British East Africa in 1896, and finished at the line's terminus, Kisumu, on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, in 1901. 200,000 individual rail-lengths and 1.2 million sleepers, 200,000 fish-plates, 400,000 fish-bolts and 4.8 million steel keys including steel girders for viaducts and causeways had to be imported, necessitating the creation of a modern port at Kilindini in Mombasa. With their new steam-powered access to Uganda, the British could transport people and soldiers about to ensure their domination of the region. Prior to the railway's construction, the British East Africa Company had begun the Mackinnon-Sclater road, a ox-cart track from Mombasa to Busia in Kenya, in 1890. The railway is gauge and virtually all single-track. Construction was carried out principally by labourers from British India, 32,000 of whom were brought in because of a lack of indigenous labour. While most of the surviving Indians returned home, 6,724 decided to remain after the line's completion, creating a community of Indian East Africans. The railway was a huge logistical achievement and became strategically and economically vital for both Uganda and Kenya. It helped to suppress slavery, by removing the need for humans in the transport of goods.〔''Encyclopædia Britannica'' 1911: British East Africa, from British East Africa〕 A railway siding connecting to the residence of the High Commissioner to Uganda was used by Governor Frederick John Jackson and his 1910 BSA railcar that was used for his hunting parties. The railcar was recently restored in South Africa. The Governor lent his railcar to President Theodore Roosevelt on his visit to Uganda during the Smithsonian–Roosevelt African Expedition; a trip along the railway is chronicled in Roosevelt's book ''African Game Trails''.〔Fender, J.E. "The Roosevelt Fox" in ''Shooting Sportsman Magazine'', November/December 2010〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Uganda Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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