The railway connected the capital city Mogadishu with Afgooye, and subsequently with Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi – usually called "Villabruzzi" (present-day Jowhar).

Plans for re-establishing the railway were made in the 1980s by the Siad Barre administration, but were aborted after the regime's collapse.

Principe Luigi Amedeo, Duca degli Abruzzi, a senior member of the Italian royal family, had the railway extended to the Shebelle River colonial villages he was then developing.

[1] The line, 114 km long, reached Villabruzzi (then in full "Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi", now "Jowhar") in 1928.

The original proposal was for the railway to go on from Villabruzzi to the Somali border with Ethiopia and into the Ogaden, but the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in 1936 stopped further construction.

Most products transported were bananas, cotton and coffee, from farm plantations of the area of Villabruzzi, to be exported through the port of Mogadishu.

These small 0-4-0 tank engines were and are the standard shunter locomotives of the system, built between 1927 and 1937 by the firm of Breda in Milan.