Rail transport in Ethiopia
The original plans from the beginning of the 20th foresaw an extension of the railway from Addis Ababa to the Didessa River near Jimma to have full access to the main coffee-producing areas of Ethiopia, but that plan was scrapped already more than 10 years before the railway finally reached Addis Ababa in 1917.
These railways would cement the Italian colonial rule in Ethiopia, and economically justified operation was not foreseen.
External experts from Yugoslavia and France proposed an extension for the existing metre gauge railway starting in Adama and going to Dilla.
A part of the financial budget required to construct some of the routes was considered to arrive through revenues from the ever-expanding railway network.
[7] The railway routes as presented by the ERC are ordered for their expected economic impact, those with the highest expected economic potential having the lowest numbers and coming first: Weldiya–Mekelle Railway In October 2021 it was reported that during the Tigray War armed forces of the Tigray People's Liberation Front had looted or destroyed most of the construction equipment in Kombolcha.
Contradicting expectation, no contract and no financing was awarded to ERC-Route 2, so that neither the completion of the main line nor the link to Kenya's LAPSSET corridor or other railways in the economically interesting south and southwest could be started.
While the National Railway Network of Ethiopia was in the planning stage, potash prices on the world market fluctuated between below US$200 and US$875 per tonne, but were rather in the upper half of that range, which made railway construction an interesting precondition for large revenues from potash exports (with a good share of between 25 and 30% going to the Ethiopian government through taxes).
[19] At that time, in 2012, potash from Dallol was expected to be transported by road over 180 km to a railway site near Mekelle first.
For the construction of the remaining section between Serdo and Tadjoura, the ERC secured US$300m funding[21] from India in 2013 and published a tender in August 2014, but only to postpone it in January 2015 indefinitely.
[22] A privately built railway was then considered instead if the annual potash production at the Dallol site would exceed 5m tonnes.
The Dallol potash reserves are shared between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the Ethiopian concession areas are in part surrounded on two sides by Eritrean territory.
It did connect the Dallol potash site to the Eritrean Red Sea coast at the port town of Mersa Fatma, only 80 kilometres (50 mi) away.
As the terrain is flat lowlands with a total elevation difference below 100 meters, a railway construction between Dallol and Mersa Fatma would pose no challenges.
[27] Moreover, the IMF asked to reduce the recent pace of increase in external indebtedness, which were considered to be not sustainable over the medium term.
The IMF asked for intensified efforts to reduce the external imbalance, and to increase and to diversify exports which would yield the highest economic growth dividend over the medium term.
[31] Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in April 2017 announced the cancellation of planned and future railway projects in mountainous northern and northwestern Ethiopia, in particular in Tigray.
The Prime Minister stated, that a successful start of operations on the existing railways had priority for the foreseeable future.
[25] Given the high level of external debt, the Ethiopian government announced the cancellation of new railway projects in July 2017.
[2][32] In accordance with that, the ERC was able to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to outsource the construction of ERC-Route 2 and its branches (the remainder of the main line) to a still to be named foreign company in March 2017, which will earn all revenues from the railway for an undisclosed number of years.
[2] The name of the company and the further conditions of the package might be revealed in October 2017, when the mentioned legislation on PPP's is considered to have passed the Ethiopian parliament.
[12][33] However, with explicit demand by the Ethiopian Railway Corporation, some changes were made and adapted, which do not fit the Chinese standard.
If there are differences between railways, this is indicated by a range given for values: Major pieces of infrastructure are, for example, dry ports for heavy containers or fuel depots for diesel and gasoline.
Besides the main rail depot at Kombolcha, another depot exists in Addis Ababa (Indode) and in Dire Dawa, where METEC is located, a large state-owned company which in its Dire Dawa subsidiary is dedicated to the construction and maintenance of rail goods wagons.
This section saw a partial rehabilitation in the six years between 2007–2012 and still sees a bi-weekly and combined freight and passenger service serving the regional economy in Eastern Ethiopia and around Dire Dawa.
As temperatures and solar radiation in the area can vary greatly between night and day and from high mountain (greater than 2,400 metres (7,900 ft)) to the sea, in order to prevent aging caused by thermal shock and by high ultraviolet light in the plateau environment, all components – rubber, cables, and others – have been specifically designed, using laminated glass for blocking more than 90% of UV penetration.
All locomotives have been adapted to the harsh climatic conditions of Ethiopia and provide air-conditioning built in for the engineer.
[44][46] Passenger coaches were built on the China Railway model 25G design, decorated with national Ethiopian colors.
All passenger cars based on the 25G platform offer two toilettes, two washing dishes and heaters for hot water.
Each passenger car shows its code near the four entrance doors, consisting of three letters and a 4-digit number (for example HSC 0017 or DPC 0002).
[48][49] The information on the wagons shown in the table below was outlined by an Ethiopia Railway Assessment.as part of a Logistics Capacity Assessment (LCA) by the World Food Programme.
