Afghan Railways

[Szdfan]

Afghanistan has three railways in the north of the country. One line into Uzbekistan and two lines into Turkmenistan. No passenger service and a lot of the equipment originated in the Soviet Union. 

 

Railway Gazette reports that some trains are still in operation despite the takeover by the Taliban. 
 

https://www.railwaygazette.com/policy/some-trains-still-running-amid-taliban-takeover/59767.article?ID=z9xqh~qhnqzx~jnnxt~W4ik~Ky0gk&utm_campaign=RG-WEEKLY-NOKIA-270821-DE&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email&utm_content=newsletter

 

“Newly-appointed head of the Ministry of Public Works Rumi Bakht-ur-Rehman Sharafat held an initial meeting with ministry staff and the Afghanistan Railway Authority on August 21 following the Taliban’s takeover of the country.

 

“The acting minister said the Taliban leadership was committed to the rehabilitation of the transport infrastructure, technical staff were still required and salaries would be paid. Pictures shared on social media show various road construction works underway.”

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Szdfan

[gavino200]

There's a registration requirement Pity. Can you describe the pictures? What does the rolling stock look like? Locos? Soviet style? US? Chinese?

Edited August 28, 2021 by gavino200

[Szdfan]

4 hours ago, gavino200 said:

There's a registration requirement Pity. Can you describe the pictures? What does the rolling stock look like? Locos? Soviet style? US? Chinese?

There are three pictures. One is of a meeting between the new minister and staff. The next one is of trucks unloading from Soviet looking box cars. The last photo is of a Soviet built TEM2 in blue paint scheme with Soviet box cars.

 

From what I can tell, the majority of equipment is Soviet.

 

I also made a mistake (or Wikipedia is out of date), there was a new rail line was started  in 2020 to link Afghanistan with Iran. 
 

From what I’ve read, it seems like there have long been plans to run rail lines through Afghanistan as an East-West route, but the turbulent political situations over the past 100 years has prevented it from happening.