In the 1920s, King Amanullah bought three small steam locomotives from Henschel of Kassel in Germany, which were put to work on a 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) gauge[11] roadside railway, 7 km (4.3 mi) long, linking Kabul and Darulaman.

The August 1928 issue of The Locomotive magazine mentions: "The only railway at present in Afghanistan is five miles long, between Kabul and Darulaman".

The tramway closed (date unknown), and was dismantled in the 1940s, but as of 2004[update] the locomotives were held, outdoors, at the National Museum of Afghanistan in Darulaman.

In 1885, the New York Times wrote about plans for connecting the Russian Transcaspian Railway, then under construction, with British India via Sarakhs, Herat, and Kandahar.

[12] About 1928, proposals were put forward for a railway to link Jalalabad with Kabul, eventually connecting to the then-British Indian system at Peshawar.

In 1930s, the Japanese Ministry of Railways proposed Eurasian high speed rail from Tokyo to Paris via Busan (through Korea Strait undersea tunnel), Beijing, Baotou, Turfan, Kashgar, Kabul, Tehran, Baghdad, Istanbul with connection to Berlin and Rome but never realised at the beginning of the World War II.

Three Henschel four-wheel 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in) narrow gauge diesel-hydraulic locomotives built in 1951 (works numbers 24892, 24993, 24994) were supplied to the power station.

For strategic reasons, past Afghan governments averted the construction of railways which could aid foreign interference in Afghanistan by Britain or Russia.

[22] In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union built an approximately 15 km (9.3 mi) rail line from Termez in Uzbekistan to Kheyrabad in Afghanistan, crossing the Amu Darya river on the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge.

[34][6][7] It is planned to become part of a rail corridor through northern Afghanistan, connecting it via Sheberghan to Mazar-i Sharif and on to the border with Tajikistan,[35] although it is unclear when this will happen.

The construction of the Khaf-Herat rail line, which links Khaf in eastern Iran with Herat in western Afghanistan, began back in 2007.

[37] The Iranian railhead closest to the Afghan border is at Khaf near Mashhad, and this is a 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge freight line.

[8] Two broad gauge 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) Pakistan Railways lines with steep gradients terminate on the border at Chaman and Torkham.

[51] On 30-12-20, Pakistan signed a joint appeal letter Tuesday seeking a $4.8 billion loan from international financial institutions for a Trans-Afghan railway line project with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.

In 2018 a 50 km (31 mi) extension from Kolkhozobod in Tajikistan to the Afghan border town of Sher Khan Bandar in Kunduz Province was approved with construction expected to start that year.

[53] In September 2010, China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) signed an agreement[54] with the Afghan Minister of Mines to investigate construction of a north–south railway across Afghanistan, running from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul and then to the eastern border town of Torkham.

MCC is constructing a 921 km-long (572 mi) 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) gauge railway line that will link Kabul with Uzbekistan in the north and Pakistan in the east.