Railways in Somalia: the Mogadishu–Jowhar line and the Italian decauvilles

The main line: Mogadishu to Jowhar

The Ferrovia Mogadiscio-Villabruzzi was built by the colonial government of Italian Somaliland. The first stretch, around Mogadishu, dates from 1914; it reached Afgooye in 1924. Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi, then had it extended to the farming villages he was developing on the Shabelle river, and the 114 km line reached Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi, "Villabruzzi", today's Jowhar, in 1927–28 (Wikipedia, Mogadishu–Villabruzzi Railway; Wikipedia, Rail transport in Somalia). An earlier plan to run the line to Luuq was dropped for lack of money after the First World War (same sources).

• Track: single line, 950 mm narrow gauge, the gauge set by an Italian law of 1879 for minor railways.
• Operator: Ferrovie Somale, a government company.
• Engines: Breda 0-4-0 shunting tank engines built 1927–1937, Ansaldo Mallet engines of 1915 and 1938, and Fiat TIBB diesel railcars; small carriages were built in Mogadishu in 1930 with a top speed of 70 km/h (same sources; TrainWeb, TIBB diesels).
• Stations: apart from Mogadishu, stations were simple, often wooden, with no passenger buildings. Wikidata records stations at Mogadishu and Afgooye (Wikidata, Afgoi station; Wikidata, Mogadishu station).

What it carried

In 1930 the line carried 19,359 passengers, tourists among them, and 43,467 tonnes of goods, earning 1,591,527 Somali lire. Most freight was bananas, cotton and coffee from the Jowhar plantations, shipped abroad through the Port of Mogadishu (Wikipedia). A 1935 film shows Jowhar cotton moving by rail (YouTube). See Sesame and bananas and Farming and harvests.

The small lines

• Genale–Afgooye: a 46 km, 600 mm "decauville" line built in 1924 by the Società Agricola Italo Somala (SAIS) to carry sugar cane from its Genale plantations to the main line (Wikipedia, Rail transport in Somalia).
• Toward Ethiopia: a 600 mm line from Bivio Adalei on the main line, built in sections from 1928 to 1936 as far as Buulobarde (130 km), then extended about 150 km by the Italian army in 1940 to Ferfer near the Ethiopian border. Somali troops of the colonial army's First and Second Somali divisions helped build it. It carried supplies for the 1935–36 invasion of Ethiopia and later served farms (same source).
• Hafun: a small decauville served the Dante salt works at Xaafuun in the north-east (same source).

In 1939 Mussolini planned a railway from Mogadishu to Addis Ababa, but only the road, the "Strada Imperiale", was built before Italy lost its empire (Wikipedia).

Dismantled in 1941

British forces occupying Italian East Africa took up the railway in 1941. Apart from a few tracks inside Mogadishu harbour it never ran again. In 1942 some diesel locomotives were moved to Eritrea for the Massawa–Asmara line, and parts of Mogadishu station were sent to India (Wikipedia; Wikipedia, Rail transport in Somalia). In the 1980s President Siad Barre proposed bringing the line back, but the plan ended when his government fell in 1991 (same source).

Related

• Ethiopia–Djibouti railways, the railways nearest to Somalia today
• Middle Shabelle and Lower Shabelle