Cape to Cairo Railway

a British project for the construction of a continuous railway from the Cape of Good Hope to the city of Cairo on the Nile. Forty-eight per cent of the road is now in operation. Trains run northward from Cape Town by way of Kimberley and Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, to Broken Hill, a rich upper region, a distance of 1,984 miles. Trains run southward from Cairo up the valley of the Nile, as far as Assouan, a distance of 600 miles; then, after a gap of 220 miles covered by steamers, the train service may be resumed a distance of 560 miles to Khartum. The present (1909) gap between Khartum and Victoria Falls is 2,500 miles wide. The Cape to Cairo route consists at the present time of three railroads having a total length of 3,044 miles, and two gaps of 2,700 miles, half of which is traversable by water. London papers used to discuss the Cape to Cairo idea much as they would discuss a line to the moon; but an all-rail route from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo is now an assured fact. The most difficult part of the route is the marshy region below Lake Albert Nyanza. See Africa; Nyanza; Victoria Falls; Uganda