Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life (514)
All aboard
On the 100th anniversary of the first railroad, Egypt hosted a conference on railway systems and how the country measured up to the rest of the world. Since this mode of transport had become vital, Al-Ahram provided extensive coverage of the event and as a result, writes Professor Yunan Labib Rizk* , many eyes were trained on it
took the occasion to pose several questions to the conference participants who had arrived in Cairo "from the four corners of the globe". "Are the participants aware that the Egyptian railway is the third in the world, ie that only two other countries preceded Egypt in the construction of a railway line?" it asked. "Do they know that Egypt used steam not only to power its trains but also ranked among the first nations in the world to use steam to power its commercial and naval ships? Are they aware that Egypt preceded all other Eastern nations in the introduction of telegraph communications and the establishment of a postal system, and that Egypt not only constructed a railway network on its own territory but also extended it to Sudan and has begun to extend it further to Kenya and Uganda, which used to be an Egyptian protectorate?"
The newspaper also reminded participants, along with the rest of its readers, that the first international debts Egypt incurred were on the loans Said Pasha had procured to construct the Alexandria-Cairo and Cairo-Suez railways "to secure the transportation routes between east and west". The next major debt accumulation occurred with the construction of the Suez Canal, which was also "in the service of all humanity", even if it transpired that "Egypt became the property of the canal rather than the canal remaining the property of Egypt."
If the latter observation was an allusion to how Egypt's debts paved the way for foreign intervention in its domestic affairs and eventually, foreign occupation, it was important to stress that Egypt had the native capabilities to steer its own car to progress. Al-Ahram thus concludes its editorial by declaring, "When the participants board Egypt's trains, it should be known to them that Egypt constructed its railways independently. Tomorrow, when they visit the barrages they will realise that it was Egypt that devised the system of barrages and dams independently. When they then visit our academies they will realise that Egypt established them a 100 years ago. And when they behold our verdant fields and farms, they will know that Egypt established the foundations and arts of agriculture also a 100 years ago."
Naturally, an international occasion of this sort, especially given its focus on a mode of transport of such strategic importance, demanded extensive coverage. This coverage included news on the preparations for and proceedings of the conference itself as well as an overview of the Egyptian railways which was then 80 years old (1853-1933).
Today it might strike us as odd that the committee formed by royal decree to organise the conference in Egypt consisted mostly of foreigners: first assistant of steam engine engineers Sloans; director of the Department of Freight Hubert; signals supervisor Stopford; the Railways Authority electricity engineer Burgess, and the dean of the Royal School of Engineering Charles Andrea. To Egyptians at the time this composition would have been much as expected. Since the end of the age of Ismail, Egyptian railways had been effectively controlled by the British on the pretext that the revenues from this service were needed to repay Egypt's foreign debt. More importantly, since its inception under Abbas I (1848-1856), the Egyptian railways project was a British bid to offset France's project to connect the Red Sea and Mediterranean with the Suez Canal. It was little wonder, therefore, that the British put this utility more firmly under their thumb following their occupation of Egypt in 1882.
If Egyptians at the time were not taken by surprise by the composition of the committee, that did not mean they did not voice objections. Soon, a second royal decree was forthcoming so as to include a number of Egyptian members: Zaki Fahmi Bek, deputy commissioner of traffic control; Abdel-Rahman Hamada, assistant director of mechanical engineers in the Railway Authority; Ibrahim El-Shurbagi Bek, medical advisor to the authority; and Hussein Said, first assistant to the inspector of the Departments of Engineering in the Railway Authority and Ministry of Public Works.
It was not long before participants arrived, and they arrived in droves. Al-Ahram reports that a special train had been selected to transport 180 participants from Alexandria to Cairo. Another item announced the arrival in Alexandria of 90 participants on board the SS Asperia. These included, among others, 30 Germans, 30 Austrians, 18 Swiss, four each from France, Italy and Sweden, and six Japanese, all of whom were transported by another specially allocated train to Cairo.
The inaugural celebrations took place in the Royal Opera House on the evening of Thursday, 19 January. Indicative of the importance of the occasion was the level of attendance: King Fouad I, along with a number of princes and nobles, ministers and other top officials. Prime Minister Ismail Sidqi delivered the opening address. Speaking in French, the prime minister gave a brief overview of the history of the expansion of the railway in Egypt and then turned to recent developments. Although the Great War had put a halt to expansion for a short period of time hardly had the war ended than Egypt resumed its domestic transportation expansion project. "Under the reign of His Royal Majesty the King," he said, "the total length of Egyptian railway has increased to 4,013 kilometres."
Perhaps it was this part of the prime minister's speech that prompted Al-Ahram to offer readers a detailed account of the state of the national rail service in 1933. In addition to 24 principle lines, there were subsidiary lines in the oases, Upper Egypt and the outskirts of Cairo. These lines together totaled 3,440 kilometres. The railways were equipped with 525 stations, 929 junctures and 1,401 switches. In addition to freight cars, there were 1,073 passenger carriages, of which 85 were deluxe, 164 first class, 214 second class, 476 third class and 134 "combined class" carriages. "These have transported 629,000 first class passengers, 2,134,000 second class passengers and 27,158,000 passengers in third class." According to the report, the busiest train station in the nation was Bab Al- Louq, which recorded more than 4.5 million passengers having boarded from its platforms. Cairo's main train station ranked second and was followed by the stations in Marg, Alexandria, Suez and Tanta. As busy as the rail service appears, the newspaper confesses that traffic in both passengers and freight had declined considerably over previous years due to the economic crisis. In addition to the national railways, there were networks of privately owned rural railways. These were operated by the Delta Narrow Gauge Railway Company (988 kilometres of tracks with 250 stations), the Fayyoum Narrow Gauge Railway Company (158 kilometres of tracks with 22 stations) and the Upper Egyptian Railway Company (257 kilometres of tracks and 51 stations).
As the conference's activities got under way, Al-Ahram provided a two-part series on "The history of the construction and development of the Egyptian railway," by Mohamed Amin Hassouna of the Department of Railway Engineering and Works of the Egyptian Railways Authority. The first episode appeared under the headline, "Historical documents never before published." The first two of these documents were from the correspondence between Mohamed Ali and Thomas Galloway, the British railway engineer who came to Cairo in 1833 with a proposal to construct a railway between Cairo and Suez. Galloway's idea was that British freight and post would be transported first by boat from Alexandria to Cairo's Nile port at Boulaq. From there the cargo would be placed on his proposed railway to Suez where it would be loaded onto British ships bound for India. It had long been commonly thought that Mohamed Ali was adverse to the idea for fear of courting growing British aspirations in Egypt. The letters Hassouna presented put paid to this impression.
The first document was, in effect, a lengthy memorandum from Galloway to Mohamed Ali dated 22 May 1834. In it the British engineer suggested two alternatives. The first was that carriages operating on the tracks would be drawn by horses, in which case there would have to be staging posts every 10 kilometres. The staging posts would be equipped with rest areas for the workers and fodder, potable water and stables for the horses, which would entail fitting out each staging post with a large water tank. The other alternative was a steam-powered train. This would require simple arrangements for water storage on board and stations at various intervals in which guards would be posted to ensure that the tracks were clear of sand and any other kinds of obstruction that would threaten to derail the carriages. Galloway concluded by assuring the pasha that the terrain was perfectly suited to a railroad, as the bedrock ran parallel to the surface. "I conducted many tests, by drilling, to determine the nature of the terrain and a positive result was reached which is presented in the designs I have drawn."
In his reply dated 8 June 1834, Mohamed Ali opted for the second alternative. "As it is our desire that the carriages be drawn by steam-powered engines due to the speed that they offer, it may be appropriate to build rest houses at 10-mile intervals. Also, so that you are not compelled to use mobile tanks for carrying water, I believe it will be possible to use one-inch diameter pipes to provide water between Cairo and Suez."
That the pasha of Egypt had clearly apprised himself of the technical details is testimony to his enthusiasm for the project, on the basis of which he sent Galloway to England to order the rails and other necessities. Unfortunately, the project ran aground because of several obstacles. The sultan in Istanbul did not take kindly to it, and Galloway died two years later. The French, too, fought the idea in the process of promoting their plans for constructing the Suez Canal. Towards the end of Mohamed Ali's reign the British contemplated making their approval of the Suez Canal conditional upon French agreement to the Cairo-Suez railway project. This Anglo-French rivalry was suspended for several years due to the death of Mohamed Ali and his son Ibrahim, and then it ceased altogether when in 1853 the British won the concession to build the railroad, which was the subject of the third document published by Hassouna.
The document was the text of an agreement between Istafan Bek, the Egyptian minister of trade and foreign affairs, and a Mr Robert Stephenson. According to its terms, Stephenson was to oversee the construction of a railway line between Alexandria and Cairo while the Egyptian government would be responsible for the construction of bridges and levees. Stephenson was to offer all possible assistance including the providing of specifications necessary for the various tasks, as well as on the engines, carriages and all other mobile equipment. He would also be responsible for examining and testing all components, machinery, engines and other equipment. For his efforts Stephenson would be paid £56,000 in equal installments between 1 February 1853 and 28 February 1854.
Hassouna's second article, entitled "Intriguing facts and recollections," opens with an amusing account of how poorly the railway system was managed when it was first introduced under Abbas I and Said. "Passengers boarding a train could never be certain when it would depart. It could have been just about to set off from Alexandria, for example, when a messenger from a foreign consul or a servant from a Turkish pasha or bek would rush in to order the train inspector to delay departure until said consul, pasha or bek or one of their wives arrived to board the train. People could be kept waiting for hours. It frequently occurred that trains would break down or get derailed en route due to the ignorance of the engineer or to some other obstacle such as a message received at one of the intervening stations to detain the train until the pasha honoured it with his arrival. The train could be detained for hours -- sometimes days -- until that obstacle was removed or removed itself."
Hassouna illustrates with a specific incident. "Once the train was held up in Tanta. On board was a group of British merchants from India on their way to Alexandria. When their patience wore out they went to register their complaint with the station inspector. The inspector was British but wore the local dress and feigned to know Turkish and Arabic so as to avoid having to listen to foreigners' complaints. They found him in his office, sitting on a bench smoking a water pipe, engrossed in the pleasure of watching his smoke rings rise to the ceiling." Frustrated at their attempt to convey their grievance while the station inspector played dumb, the merchants swore at him, in English of course. The man did not depart from character and, as though to corroborate his Oriental identity he responded, in Arabic, "God created the world in six days, so be patient!"
Among the "intriguing" facts was that the morning trains that set off from Cairo and Alexandria would meet in Tanta where the engineers would change places so that each could return to his own city. He also relates that when Ottoman Sultan Abdel-Aziz visited Egypt he had never seen a train before in his life. When he disembarked in Alexandria and found the train waiting for him, he was transfixed. "He fired question after question about that amazing machine at the station inspector who furnished him with abundant information. Satisfied, the sultan boarded the train as he praised Egypt for its rapid progress and advancement." Readers would also have been intrigued to learn that when the Khedive Ismail built Ismailia he needed to think of a way to attract people to the new city. His solution was to remove the tracks from the Ain Shams--Suez railway and reconstruct the line to Suez so that it would pass first through Zaqaziq and then Ismailia.
On the afternoon of 30 January 1933, participants of the 12th conference on the International Federation of Railways made their way to the conference hall in Heliopolis Palace Hotel to attend the closing ceremony. Presiding over the occasion was Minister of Transportation Ibrahim Fikri Karim. To his right on the stage sat the chairman of the permanent committee of the federation and to his left the committee's secretary- general. When the customary salutations and congratulatory speeches had been made, Al-Ahram succeeded in holding an exclusive interview with Karim Pasha. One of the reasons the Egyptian government hosted such international conferences, he told the Al-Ahram correspondent, was that they brought to Egypt scientists of every sort from around the globe. "Undoubtedly, every Egyptian is proud to know that when these scientists return to their countries they not only speak of Egypt's glorious past, its silent stones, its enormous temples, its great antiquities and its ancient history. They also talk of its great present and present glory."
More important than such public relations statements were the results of the conference itself. The resolutions adopted by the conference, in the opinion of Al-Ahram, had a single aim: "not to protect the interests of the Railways Authority but to protect the interests of the public". As the resolutions contained a level of technical detail, the newspaper rephrased them so that they could be understood by the general public. The first pertained to ensuring the safety of vehicles and pedestrians at railway crossings. Although the ideal solution was to build bridges and overhead walkways or underground tunnels, only very wealthy countries could afford to do so. The US railway authorities, for example, used such measures to reduce the number of railway crossings from 232,000 to only 5,958. Egypt, on the other hand, could only resort to such measures for those crossings that have the heaviest traffic, otherwise a system of automatic barriers and warning signals should be sufficient.
A second resolution pertained to measures to prevent railway carriages from derailing. Al-Ahram observes, "This is a highly technical issue involving the distribution of the weight of the carriages, their centre of gravity, the placing of the wheels and the construction of the rails so as to facilitate movement around bends. It also entails the quality of the rails, the distance between them, the gradation of inclines and the smoothness of intersections."
Conference participants also considered the possibility of converting trains to electric power. From the economic standpoint, the conversion itself would be costly, but great savings could be made in the operation of the trains in the long run. They concluded, "Conversion to electricity, in general, would be cost effective in the event that the government can obtain funds at a reasonable interest rate and electric power at an appropriate rate."
However, of more pressing importance to conference members was the growing competition the railways were facing from the automotive industry, or "road transport", both in passenger and in freight services. Indicative of the gravity of the situation was that in the previous year the Egyptian Railway Authority had had to reduce fares, a measure that other national railways had also been forced to institute. In the opinion of the participants, a major factor that hampered the ability of the rail service to compete was the enormous costs of maintaining the railway lines. Car owners, they pointed out, did not have to incur similar expenses with regard to road maintenance; rather, road works and maintenance were paid for by the public through their taxes. As Al-Ahram put it, "In other words, we could say that tax payers are helping the road transport industry." Nevertheless, participants were eager to stress that their governments should not take any action to hamper the development of the automotive industry. Instead, they called for measures that would encourage the two transport systems to coordinate towards providing better services for passengers and more efficient services for freight.
Once the conference resolutions were announced, visiting participants packed their bags and left Cairo for Alexandria. Naturally, they took the train; they would not have chosen otherwise.
* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
