distance from dar es salaam to kapiri rail distance is 1860km and not 1400 further there is borderpost at Tunduma which increses further delay that is why it takes 48hrs but without any border stoppage it normally takes 25hr that is
Fine, it is around 1700-1850km, the distance between Kapiri and Dsm. But that does not in anyway counter my assertion that at that max speed of 120km/h, Tazara trains should therefore be able to complete that journey wthin just a day, within around 15hrs. Putting into account those factors that slow down the pace of the travel into account however- and indeed they are inevitable- we can then add some 5 or 10 hours to the journey, let's say 25hrs.
But the journey takes two days.
Read here.
This cannot entirely be blamed solely on the already mentioned factors, there has to be more contributing to the slow pace of the journey, and that has to be the speed of the trains!
I believe there are some occassions when it'd take even more than three days, say engine breakdown. I can only imagine getting stuck in the middle of nowhere; enduring the heat, the cold, the wetness, the dust, the darkness, the animals infested forest........what can be more agonizing than that? Not a journey for the faint hearted.
Tazara SGR built from 1970 to 1975 and is far better than kenyas.
1. Tazara is not a Standard Guage Railway, it is a Cape Gauge Railway, whilst the old Mombasa-Uganda railway in Kenya is a Narrow Guage Railway.
2. If the TAZARA is "far better", as u say than the Kenyan railroads, why then is it operating below its targeted annual cargo capacity of 20million tonnes? The highest it has ever notched up I gather, is only about 12miillion tonnes; and that was long time ago, at the dawn of the 80s.
Then it begun to dwindle drastically, losing nearly all its clientele in the Southern Africa to the ports in the now newly independent countries in that region, such as Luanda, Beira, Durban......etc. As of 2014 for example, it managed to handle less than 370,000 tons..........the amount of cargo and passengers that is.
Therefore, this tendency by u Tanzanians to brag to us Kenyans about that crippling TAZARA railway is pretty ludicrous!