Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania

5. The Ordinary Train

c h a p t e r 5 The Ordinary Train The TAZARA passenger station in Dar es Salaam was designed to be an imposing landmark. A visitor to the station in 1976 described the station as “bigger and more splendid than any other building” in Dar es Salaam at the time.1 The starkness of the station’s concrete exterior was softened by the installation of graceful five-lantern Chinese street lamps throughout the forecourt. TAZARA’s customers entered and exited the station beneath a broad balcony; the soaring windows above them allowed daylight to flood into the cavernous marble-floored entry hall below. Inside, a double staircase led to the waiting areas and loading platforms where passengers would board and disembark from the trains that traveled between Dar es Salaam and points westwards. On the days when trains were leaving for the interior, passengers gathered in the departure areas with their luggage, waiting to board the train. Groups of families, friends, and other well-wishers escorted the travelers to see them off. Secondary school students waited with the suitcases and book bags that would accompany them to their boarding schools in rural settings. Families of parents and small children sorted their belongings, for if they were traveling in first or sec­ ond class they would be separated into compartments by gender. Business travelers, traders, National Service recruits, TAZARA employees, and a multitude of other passengers awaited the train’s departure, anticipating their upcoming journeys. 94   Ordinary Train Those traveling across the border into Zambia or headed for one of the large interior towns within Tanzania would be taking the Express Train—the passenger train that stopped at the largest stations between Dar es Salaam and Kapiri Mposhi. On alternate days, travelers would board the Ordinary Train—the slower train that frequented each of the small stations and halt stops along the route between Dar es Salaam and Mbeya. Even seasoned business travelers frequently preferred the Ordinary Train to the Express, for they could take advantage of the inexpensive and diverse farm products for sale on the different station platforms. Most of the passengers on the Ordinary Train were destined for one or more of the smaller settlements along the railway line, in particular those stations within the “passenger belt” that extended from the northern Selous Game Reserve boundary up to the regional town of Mbeya. Among them would be residents of these small settlements returning from the city to their rural homes, traders going there to purchase farm produce, and wamachinga peddlers carrying consumer goods for sale in more remote areas. Some distance away from the TAZARA passenger station in Dar es Salaam was a second terminus for trains traveling to and from upcountry. The harbor at Kurasini was the final destination for TAZARA’s goods trains coming in from the west. Goods trains arrived at the port loaded with ingots from Zambia’s copper Figure 5.1. TAZARA railway station in Dar es Salaam, 1977. Photograph courtesy of Tanzania Department of Information Services (Maelezo). The Ordinary Train   95 mines, or pulling wagonloads of bulk commodities from the regional trading centers in Tanzania’s southern highlands. These goods wagons, or behewa, might be carrying stacks of cut timber from the pine forest plantations of Sao Hill in Iringa District, maize harvested in Iringa, Njombe, or Mbeya, or rice collected at Mlimba by one of the big merchant houses from Dar es Salaam. The wagons might even be carrying a shipment of live cattle transported by livestock merchants based in Ifakara or Usangu. The goods trains carried products in large quantities that filled entire wagons, transported by agricultural projects and large-scale trading enterprises. Smaller traders on the other hand were unlikely to have enough volume to fill a goods wagon by themselves. In some cases they joined together in informal associations to share a wagonload shipment. Yet even if they did manage to have a large enough shipment, small-scale traders were frequently at a disadvantage when there were limited goods wagons available to customers. Most often, small entrepreneurs shipped their goods as “parcels” in the luggage wagon that was pulled by the Ordinary Train. These parcels were much smaller in weight and in bulk than the commodities carried in the goods wagons that rolled into the Kurasini terminus. And they were just as likely to be transported from one small station to another within the...