By EMMANUEL BOAZ RIFT VALLEY RAILWAYS SHIPMENT

Over 337 Million US Dollars worth of rail part arrived yesterday at the Kenya Ports Authority. The imported rail will be used to construct a 6.5 km double truck new modern airport line at the Jomo Kenyatta international Airport (JKIA) which will join the main land at Embakassi in the Nairobi commuter rail system. Speaking during the receiving of the rail Permanent secretary in the ministry of transport Mr Sirus Njiru said that the rail will enable operators to offer an express shuttle time between JKIA and the Nairobi railway station. “The construction of the airport line will begin very soon and will cost 5 billion out of this about one million will be spent on constructing the rail lines and the rest on supporting infrastructure at the arrival terminal at JKIA where the station shall be constructed. An overpass bridge is also to be constructed on Mombasa road.” Mr Njiru said. This will enable operators to offer an express shuttles time between JKIA and Nairobi railway station. Furthermore the imported 6,081 bars of rails will repair the 70 km worn out curves on the section of the permanent way between Nairobi and Mombasa. At the end of this government investment program around 340 million US dollars will have been spent The shipment by the Regional rail operator Rift Valley Railways (RVR) is set to increase freight volume. “We have already shipped in 6,869 metric tones of rail bars, 10,000 sleepers and other rail accessories which have been spent out of the first trances of the finance package signed in August 2011,” the RVR group chief Executive Mr Brown Ondago confirmed as he Spoke during the event when receiving the materials. We recently commissioned the construction of 9 culverts on the Uganda side of the truck between Busembatia and Jinja at a cost of $ 4.9 million which we expect to be complete by December 2012. Once these two projects are complete, the reliability and efficiency of our operations will improve significantly as we will be able to run bigger capacity trains thereby improving our loading and reducing the operation’s transit times” Mr Brown added. More wagons are also to be added to the ones in place currently the project is still underway expected to begin in august. Already steel tyres and other spare parts have been received. The first phase of this project will cost 62.1 million US dollars and is expected to be complete by December 2014. The second half of the project will include rehabilitation of 16 locomotives and installation of automatic train warranty systems (ATW) to be completed in early 2013. This is a great boost to the railway services since there will be faster off take of cargo hence increasing the rail speed from 45km/h to 65km/h. The last time Kenya imported such rail was in 1985.

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