Libyan Railways

The construction of railways in the African Italian colonies (Eritrea, Libya and Somalia) did not have, for various reasons, a great development compared to that promoted by other European countries on the same continent.

[1] The first rail lines were built mainly for war needs in the absence of efficient means of communication in the occupied territories, after the conquests of Eritrea and Libya.

The Libyan ones were suppressed in the 1960s, but in the same decade the Eritrean railway between Asmara and Massawa was reactivated after long neglect of trafficking.

The first section was done in 1912 from the port of Tripoli to Ain Zara, with 11 km of rails using a track gauge of 950 mm.

However Italian experts studied the possibility of building a "Transaharan railway" from Libya to the gulf of Guinea in cooperation with the French authorities: but it remained only a colonial dream.

So, in spring 1941 the Italian government started the construction of a new railway (with a standard African track gauge of 1435 mm) between Tripoli and Tobruk.

[5] In summer 1942 was conquered by the Italians (with Rommel's Afrika Korps) the railways line built by the British and New Zealanders[6] from Egypt until Tobruk, near the Egyptian-Libyan border.