Ethiopia–Djibouti railways: the 1917 line and the 2018 line

Two lines, one route

Landlocked Ethiopia's nearest port is Djibouti, and both railways to it cross the Somali-inhabited lowlands east of Dire Dawa before entering Djibouti between Dewele and Ali Sabieh (Wikipedia, Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway). The Associated Press described the new line as running "through restive region", the Somali Region of Ethiopia (AP).

The metre-gauge line, 1897 to today

The Ethio-Djibouti Railway (Chemin de Fer Djibouto-Éthiopien) is a single-track, 1,000 mm gauge line of 784 km, about 100 km of it in Djibouti. Work started in 1897, a year after Ethiopia's victory at Adwa; the line reached Dire Dawa (311 km) by 1902 and Addis Ababa in 1917 (Wikipedia, Ethio-Djibouti Railways). Before it, the trip from the coast to Addis Ababa took six weeks by camel and mule caravan. The Djibouti City station was finished in 1900 and Dire Dawa's in 1910 (same source; train-franco-ethiopien.com).

• Rolling stock: in 1936 the company had 60 locomotives, 45 coaches and 353 goods wagons; Swiss SLM steam engines gave way to diesels from 1950, with Alsthom the main supplier from 1954 (same Wikipedia article).
• Decline: from the 1950s road transport competed with it. French steelworks supplied rails and sleepers until 1975, when maintenance stopped; an EU-funded rehabilitation ran from 2007 to 2012 (same source).
• Working length: 784 km from 1917 to 2004; 311 km (Djibouti–Dire Dawa) from 2004 to 2014; 213 km (Guelile–Dire Dawa) since 2014. In February 2018 a mixed passenger and freight train ran twice a week between Dire Dawa and the border, stopping at Dewele and Guelile (Wikipedia).

The standard-gauge line, 2018

The Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway is an electrified standard-gauge line of 759 km: 666 km in Ethiopia and 93 km in Djibouti. It runs from Sebeta outside Addis Ababa through Modjo, Adama, Awash and Dire Dawa to Nagad station near Djibouti's airport; freight trains run the last 12 km to Doraleh port on diesel (Wikipedia). It has 21 stations and 68 bridges and viaducts and no tunnels (same source). Chinese contractors China Railway Group (CREC) and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) built it, and Ethiopia and Djibouti secured about $3 billion in loans (Capital Ethiopia, May 2013).

• Opening: Djibouti's section and Nagad station were opened on 10 January 2017 by Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh and Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn (Wikipedia, Nagad railway station); commercial service on the whole line was inaugurated on 1 January 2018 (Xinhua, January 2018).
• Owner and operator: the Ethio-Djibouti Standard Gauge Rail Transport company, owned 75% by Ethiopia and 25% by Djibouti, formed in 2017 (Wikipedia).
• Traffic and money: capacity is 24.9 million tonnes of freight a year. In 2019 it carried 84,073 passengers and earned $40 million against operating costs of $70 million (same source). Wikipedia reports that power cuts on the electrified line have kept freight below plans, so most Ethiopian cargo still goes by road (Wikipedia, Port of Djibouti).

Related

• Port of Djibouti and Doraleh
• Airports of the Somali Region of Ethiopia
• Somalis in Djibouti and Somalis in Ethiopia