Two Q's about the Cairo-Cape Town Railroad

Off the bat, I'll admit to knowing precious little about what held it up, other than "interwar economic issues" for Britain.

Therefore, I pose two questions:
1) What could have changed to push foward its completion (Muted CP victory, albeit with Tanzania falling de-facto to the Brits? = Stronger impetus to secure the region?)

...and

2) What would have been the consequences of its completion (call it finished in... the mid/late 20's / Pre Great Depression) on the development / connection with the British holdings in Southern Africa and the rest of Africa?

Merci. :)
 
Im thinking that it might be a bit of a white elephant.

It would be far cheaper, for instance, to send any goods from cape to cairo via sea rather than rail.

Otoh, the last time this was discussed, and no i dont remember when or the thread name, people pointed out that the advantage was all the connexions in between.
 
Really the reason it didnt get built was not only because large sections would be useless but also because there was much more important things to spend the money on closer to home to begin with and then no money later. The advantages would be connections on small sections and possibly the greater investment generally it would bring. I doubt it would make the colonies any more intergrated for a while because it would probably be a mainly european passenger thing.
 

Cook

Banned
Im thinking that it might be a bit of a white elephant.
Definately. To be economical a rail line needs to be as short as possible and run to the closest port. Even for the transport of passengers it wouldn't be as cheap or comfortable as sea travel and, given interuptions caused by rail damage and halts for recoalling and watering, probably not all that much faster than by sea. And if you are after rapid transit, aviation was already on the horison.
 
Definately. To be economical a rail line needs to be as short as possible and run to the closest port. Even for the transport of passengers it wouldn't be as cheap or comfortable as sea travel and, given interuptions caused by rail damage and halts for recoalling and watering, probably not all that much faster than by sea. And if you are after rapid transit, aviation was already on the horison.

When the HMS Vanguard traveled from Britain to South Africa with King George V in 1947, it took 17 days to go from Britain to South Africa. Even if you assume it takes four days to go from Cape Town to Cairo (probably about right with 1920s technology), if you can get from Cairo to Southampton in 13 days, you are coming out ahead. For Passengers it is probably not that practical to go to South Africa that way, but for going to the places on the way it works much better. It's better as a freight railroad, but as an economic success, it does require much greater levels of development along the route for it to be of good use.
 

Cook

Banned
It's better as a freight railroad, but as an economic success...
Rail transport is never as economic as sea transport, that's why rail lines are run along the shortest route to the nearest port. To develop the African hinterland, a series of rali lines running basicly east -west, from the coastal citys and ports to the hinterland, would pay dividends. A long rail line north-south, wouldn't.
 
On the one hand the potential economic impact in the long term of having that railway in place is quite large, but the reality is that as proposed it just wasn't going to do all that much and quite likely wouldn't have stayed intact long enough to have that impact. Remember that there never really was a proposal for a single Cape to Cairo, it was really a project to stitch together a series of routes with multiple gauge breaks and no serious prospect of operational integration. Financially there really never was a case for the railways, in terms of colonial economics routes to the sea will always outperform the overland route and while it could save time for passengers there just wasn't (and still isn't really) the kind of massive levels of north south passenger traffic that could pay for a project on this scale. Doubly so when you consider that Cook is exactly right; by the time there is any realistic prospect of completing the line aviation is at least on the horizon, and very likely essentially a reality.

Realistically I would expect that the network as a whole would never have been anything like financially viable and that any semblance of an integrated network would have fallen apart as Africa was decolonized. If anything it would be taken as a sign of the folly of empire and accelerate Britain's disillusionment with it.

That said, even more so than OTL it would probably be seen as the great lost opportunity of Africa, and there is every chance that we would be seeing a variety of initiatives to rebuild and reopen missing links around now. You might well see it connected very closely to the various things that make of the Trans Asian Railway initiative. IMO to see a major historical impact you would really need the Cape to Cairo route to be at least mostly a single gauge and COMPLETED (rather than just barely started) in the 19th century. While that would approach ASB (at least without a massively different conception of empire) you then do start to get potential for very different economic condition and relations through most of the continent. Even then its not going to make financial sense, but at least it starts to get the potential to be a long lasting system.

All that said, let me throw a bit of insane imperial rambling out there: how about a contiguous overland British Empire stretching from Singapore to Cape Town with a railway network connecting it all (when you include post WWI African and Middle Eastern acquisitions that "only" actually requires conquering Persia and Siam). Perhaps it could be just in the realm of possibility if the railway manias somehow had an imperial bent to them.
 
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As others have said it is going to be a white elephant that is never going to be financially sustainable. However it's cultural effects could be much larger, not only would it be a tie for the various colonies and post-independence countries but it could well gather the sort of mystique and romance that the Orient Express has developed. Maybe Arthur Conan Doyle or Kipling could write a major hit about it.
 

Thande

Donor
As others have said it is going to be a white elephant that is never going to be financially sustainable. However it's cultural effects could be much larger, not only would it be a tie for the various colonies and post-independence countries but it could well gather the sort of mystique and romance that the Orient Express has developed. Maybe Arthur Conan Doyle or Kipling could write a major hit about it.

There's also the potential for negative effects as well though, like how that east-to-west road they built across Africa (can't remember the name) accelerated the spread of disease through formerly isolated regions.
 

Cook

Banned
like how that east-to-west road they built across Africa (can't remember the name) accelerated the spread of disease through formerly isolated regions.
The Kinshasa Highway from Kinshasa, Congo to Nairobi, Kenya, otherwise known as the AIDS Highway.
 

Thande

Donor
The Kinshasa Highway from Kinshasa, Congo to Nairobi, Kenya, otherwise known as the AIDS Highway.

Ah thanks. Well obviously it won't be AIDS in this case but we could see similar unforeseen deleterious consequences (as the Civil Service would probably word it in the memo).
 
Rail transport is never as economic as sea transport, that's why rail lines are run along the shortest route to the nearest port. To develop the African hinterland, a series of rali lines running basicly east -west, from the coastal citys and ports to the hinterland, would pay dividends. A long rail line north-south, wouldn't.

At the time, however, sea transport was slower, and while it might make sense to use ships from South Africa, from Rhodesia northward going to Britain via the Cape to Cairo is a much quicker (and safer) proposition. But you are right that in a number of ways it would be a financially troubled enterprise, just because of the sea routes and the multiple breaks of gauge mentioned earlier, which runs up trans-shipment costs in a big hurry.
 
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