About This Book

Recent world events have focused attention on Afghanistan and inevitably enthusiasts have asked whether it had any railways. As set out in this booklet Afghanistan has had a few short lines.

The first railway in Afghanistan was a 2 ft 6 in gauge roadside tramway in Kabul, which opened in about 1923 and probably did not operate beyond about 1933. There were some industrial railways, of which the details have yet to be found, including a 60 cm gauge line used in the 1950’s in the construction of the Sarobi Power Station, a few miles down river from Kabul.

However, the main railway interest in Afghan history is not the railways inside the country, but those around its borders. Afghanistan’s position as a buffer state between the British and Russian Empires resulted in a number of railways being built around its borders for primarily military purposes. The first of these reached the border from the north in 1889. The Russian system was eventually extended a few kilometres into Afghanistan during the Russian occupation in the 1980’s.

There have been numerous unfulfilled proposals over the last 150 years to join the Russian, Pakistan and Iranian railways across Afghanistan. Several past Afghan rulers have opposed this, seeing it as a first step to being annexed by one of their neighbours. It remains to be seen if the American occupation will finally give Afghanistan a respectable railway network, as has been suggested as part of the recovery plan.