TechnesstivityGoogle Doodle Celebrates Kenya-Uganda Railway
Today’s Google Doodle in Kenya and Uganda celebrates the 100th anniversary of the completion of the Kenya-Uganda railway. The doodle can be viewed at Google.co.ke and is an aerial painting of the railway. The Uganda Railway (known locally as The Lunatic Express) is a railway system and former railway company linking the interiors of Uganda and Kenya with the Indian Ocean at Mombasa in Kenya.
The railway is 1,000 mm gauge and virtually all single-track. The project cost about £5 million to complete and the first services started in 1903. Construction was carried out principally by Sikh labourers from British India, many of whom remained in East Africa to create the substantial Indian minority communities in Kenya and Uganda.
The Uganda Railway was built by the British Empire under the Foreign Office at the start of the period when Britain maintained colonial control of the region as British East Africa. Construction of the line started at the port city of Mombasa in the Kenya Colony in 1896 and reached Kisumu, on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, in 1901.
By 1931 it was extended to Kampala in the Uganda Protectorate. Although almost all of the rail line was actually in the colony that would come to be known as Kenya, the original purpose of the project was to provide a modern transport link to carry raw materials out of, and manufactured British goods into, the Uganda Protectorate.
Source: Wikipedia
