Zimbabwe in the 1990s

Bulawayo -

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A little advertising for train travel in Zimbabwe today. http://www.seat61.com/Zimbabwe.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I am quite familiar with Zimbabwe railways and travelled from the Zambia border to Bulawayo, and from there to Botswana, and also from Bulawayo to Salisbury, and from there to Beira. All that in the days when it was Rhodesia.

But I think that since then the whole system has decayed from lack of maintenance and investment.

George, you have memories of experiences that most of us will never have.
The new Trains magazine, February 2017, has a two-page photo spread of a pair of Garretts pulling a Geoff Cook Tours eight day steam charter excursion near Thomson Junction, Zimbabwe, in 2010.

philipmartin wrote:George, you have memories of experiences that most of us will never have.
The new Trains magazine, February 2017, has a two-page photo spread of a pair of Garretts pulling a Geoff Cook Tours eight day steam charter excursion near Thomson Junction, Zimbabwe, in 2010.

Rhodesia Railways, like those in South Africa, had a policy of hanging on to steam because, while they had a coal industry they had no oil, and were likely to be under sanctions to buy oil. They didn't use steam because they liked it but for reasons of avoiding the damage from difficulties in importing oil. You will note that in South Africa the change of regime has led to the end of steam. In Zimbabwe steam has survived mainly (entirely) because the collapse of the economy has made it impossible to import oil and oil products.

Other similar railways used steam because they could make the parts in-house; diesel parts required often nonexistent cash even if they could be imported.

NorthWest wrote:Other similar railways used steam because they could make the parts in-house; diesel parts required often nonexistent cash even if they could be imported.

The Mugabe regime has been so entirely incompetent that they have totally destroyed the currency and are entirely unable to import anything.

Also, steam is much more labor intensive than diesel. I imagIne that might be less signicant in Zimbabwe.