History of rail transport in Tanzania
The first railway lines in Tanganyika, known at the time as German East Africa, were built soon after the first tramway in Zanzibar.
By September 1916, both the Usambara Railway and the Central Line from the coast at Dar es Salaam to Ujiji were fully under Allied control.
After the Armistice in 1918, the British occupied Tanganyika was granted to the United Kingdom as a League of Nations mandate.
From 1950, the Overseas Food Corporation established the 610 mm (2 ft) Southern Province Railway in the south of Tanganyika.
The PRC government sponsored construction of the railway specifically to eliminate Zambia's economic dependence on Rhodesia and South Africa.
In 1977, in light of the different policies and widening standards of economic development in its participating countries, the East African Union broke up, and all of its joint structures were also dissolved.
Economically, the network then went constantly downhill, due to increasing road traffic, corruption and political neglect.
A number of rail links, such as between Arusha and Moshi, were shut down, and passenger services abandoned, including on the Usambara Railway.
However, it has never been profitable and more recently it has suffered from competition from road transport (such as the Trans–Caprivi Highway and Walvis Bay Corridor to Namibia) and the re-orientation of Zambia's economic links towards South Africa after the end of apartheid.
[5] As of October 2008, a Tanzanian newspaper described the TAZARA's condition as being "on the verge of collapse due to financial crisis", with the operator being three months late on paying worker's wages and most of its 12 locomotives being out of service.
[7][8] Meanwhile, in 2007 RITES Ltd. of India won a contract from Tanzania's Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSRC) to operate the TRC's passenger and freight services on a concession basis for 25 years.
The services previously operated by the TRC were run as Tanzania Railway Ltd, with the government owning a 49% stake.
