Khyber train safari

The Khyber Pass railway line, sometimes called the Khyber Pass Line, is a single-track, non- electrified railway from the West Pakistani city of Peshawar on the located in the Hindukush Khyber Pass to Landi Khana Pakistani-Afghan border town.

Route

The route begins in the station of Peshawar. In the suburbs it crosses the runway of the airport, making it almost always comes nowadays to long waiting times at the exit. Jamrud Up to 461 meters height, it is relatively flat with a Vorgebirgsebene. From there it goes to 16 kilometers in length and through several tunnels and two hairpins on to Shahgai that below the apex of the route is just 818 meters. The route then runs also quite mountainous, over a distance of 18 kilometers to Landi Kotal, situated at an altitude of 760 meters.

The train station of Landi Kotal has 6 tracks with a very extensive track system, which is completely oversized for the originally planned three trains per week.

The three -kilometer-long continuation to Landi Khana was decommissioned shortly after the start, but is still receiving and has on the short length of the route even tunnel and a hairpin.

Since the track was built mainly for military reasons, the cost hardly played a role in the construction. For this reason the route is traced out comparatively complex. Thus, there are on the obtained route to Landi Kotal today to 40 kilometers in length four hairpins, 92 bridges, 34 tunnels and very extensive trackage.

History

Initial plans to build a railway line from Peshawar to Kabul originated in the second Afghan war in 1879. Due to the difficult geography of the building but was considered too complex and costly, which is why the line was built until 1901 only up to the first foothills near Fort Jamrud.

1919, the feasibility of the entire line has been declared in a report and in 1920 was after the local Pathanenstämme had agreed to start the construction. On November 3, 1925, Landi Kotal was, where there was a stronghold of the British army reached. By 1926, the remaining distance was completed by the border town of Landi Khana. During the construction, although the continuation of the construction direction Kabul was already planned and already done some preliminary work on an extension to Tork -ham, this was never built. In 1932 the section between Landi Kotal Landi Khana and was abandoned, but never eliminated. There are tracks and all signals are present, although the line was partially buried by landslides.

With the independence of Pakistan in 1947, the route was taken over by the Pakistani state railways newly established.

Since the 1970s, only drove a weekly train, each Friday, which usually only two cars and occasionally consisted wagons. With the beginning of the Soviet- Afghan war in 1980, passenger services were fully adjusted, also the freight came to a virtual standstill.

During the 1990s, the Pakistani government tried to market the route as tourist attractions. This perverse insofar as it allowed the security situation, occasional special trains with steam covering.

The area of ​​the Khyber Pass was indeed always dominated at no time under British and Pakistani control but was from the local Pashtun tribes. For this reason, the Khyber Rifles, an armed militia of tribals who are paid to protect the route from the Pakistani central government were founded.