The Benguela Railway 2012, Part 4

The Benguela Railway 2012, Part 4
The Cunje-Kuito Graveyard

The railways of Angola are undergoing a remarkable revival, being reconstructed by the Chinese funded largely by an oil boom. The Luanda Railway in the north is effectively complete, the Mocamedes Railway in the south is making good progress and will open in mid-2012, but the most spectacular progress is being made on the Benguela Railway which will once again be a through international route in 2012/2013.

For those not familiar with the geography of the railway there is a useful map available http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/angola.pdf.
A good source of current information is http://www.railwaysafrica.com/blog/category/africa-update/sadc/angola-sadc/.
A list of CFB steam survivors on Gavin Hamilton's site is here http://www.beyergarrattlocos.co.uk/survivors.html
Jamie Grieve's pictures of CFNB steam survivors are here http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb241/jamie_grieve/interesting%20iron/.
For Wikipedia's brief primer on the railway - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benguela_railway
For a fabulous selection of maps covering this area - ~~http://www.prof2000.pt/users/secjeste/arkidigi/angolmaps01.htm~~ (link dead by 12th April 2018)
For an extensive set of pictures please see http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=645931&page=12 (added 16th October 2012)

For the record. the railway reopened from the coast to Huambo (formerly Nova Lisboa) at the end of August 2011. Reports on the web indicate that the next section to Cuito/Kuito (Silva Porto) was opened in February 2012, ~~http://allafrica.com/stories/201204010134.html~~ (paywall applied by 12th April 2018) reports that a Kuito - Huambo service would restart on 4th April 2012 and other reports claimed that the section on to Luena would be ready at the end of April 2012. This seems a big ask in terms of what has gone before as it represents the best part of half the remaining section to the DRC. There is currently very little freight traffic and the passenger train is lightly loaded.

Jose da Palma is based in the country and has sent me some pictures of the 'new' railway and some of the steam survivors. This is Part 4, click below for the other parts:

The Benguela Railway actually passes some way of Kuito (formerly Silva Porto), compared to Huambo, the facilities here were quite minor, this is the late Peter Michie's picture of the steam shed in 1974:

It has been reported elsewhere some time back that the dumped Garratts (1 10B and 2 10D identified from 7 or 8 in all) had been cleared but this appears not to be completely the case. Jose's pictures date from 25th February 2012, the location is about 100 yards to the south-east of the Cunje - Kuito station, about half way between the new tracks (already laid) leading to the station platform and the dirt road leading to Kamakupa

This appears to be the front and rear units from a 10D Garratt, possibly, that is its boiler above:

Saving wrecked Garratts will hardly be a high priority for the current railway administration but it would be nice to think that a small representative sample could be out together from what is left - the Huambo works site would be a good choice for a small railway museum. One can at least dream of once again seeing what Basil Roberts saw back in 1970 - 361 at Benguela, there are more like this in my articulated locomotives section and even more on our Images of Rail CD ROM "Safari Steam South".

Finally this is the rather dated Google Earth view of the station area: