Kenya to receive 10 freight carriages for SGR

Police officers man the entrance of the first class coaches of the SGR train at the Mombasa Terminus. /MONICAH MWANGI

Kenya to receive 10 freight carriages for SGR

The Chinese government has deployed ships carrying 10 freight train carriages from Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, for Kenya to be used on the newly operational Mombasa-Nairobi railway.

According to China Daily, Wang Junsong, a senior engineer with the corporation on Friday said the X2K carriage is double-layered with a load capacity of 78 tonnes, and each carriage is able to carry four containers 20-feet-long

“The carriages, produced by CRRC Qiqihar railway stock corporation, will be delivered to Kenya by ship via Dalian, a port city in Liaoning province,” said Wang.

The corporation received orders totalling 1,000 carriages for the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya, a 480-km line operating from May 31.

The $3.8-billion project was constructed by the China Road and Bridge Corporation, with 90 per cent funded by China.

This comes two days after Kenya inaugurated a $3.2 billion railway funded by China linking the capital Nairobi to the port of Mombasa, the country’s biggest infrastructure project since independence more than 50 years ago.

The railway is part of China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, a multi-billion dollar series of infrastructure projects upgrading land and maritime trade routes between China and Europe, Asia and Africa.

The line is eventually expected to connect Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Ethiopia to Mombasa so the Indian Ocean port can act as a gateway to East Africa for trade with China and other nations.

Source: The Star