The amount of water
necessary is largely dependent on the grades of the line. The 'flat desert'
proved to be a steady slope up to a height of 1,600 feet above Halfa,
and the calculations were further complicated. The difficulty had,
however, to be faced, and a hundred 1,500-gallon tanks were procured.
These were mounted on trucks and connected by hose; and the most striking
characteristic of the trains of the Soudan military railway was the long
succession of enormous boxes on wheels, on which the motive power of the
engine and the lives of the passengers depended.
The first spadeful of sand of the Desert Railway was turned
on the first day of 1897; but until May, when the line to Kerma was
finished, no great efforts were made, and only forty miles of track had
been laid. In the meanwhile the men of the new Railway Battalion were
being trained; the plant was steadily accumulating; engines, rolling stock,
and material of all sorts had arrived from England. From the growing
workshops at Wady Halfa the continual clatter and clang of hammers and the
black smoke of manufacture rose to the African sky. The malodorous incense
of civilisation was offered to the startled gods of Egypt. All this was
preparation; nor was it until the 8th of May that track-laying into the
desert was begun in earnest. The whole of the construction gangs and
railroad staff were brought from Kerma to Wady Halfa, and the daring
pioneers of modern war started on their long march through the wilderness,
dragging their railway behind them--safe and sure road which infantry,
cavalry, guns, and gunboats might follow with speed and convenience.
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