Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE UGANDA RAILWAY. 53 MASAI, THROUGH WHOSE COUNTRY THE RAILWAY PASSES. ince of Seyidie, is an old but now greatly modernized town. As has been said, it is the starting-point of the line. The rail- way runs from the town for a distance of 133 miles point. through the province of Tsavo, reaching the mainland by a hand- some steel trestle bridge. This is named the Salisbury Bridge, after the deceased statesman, and was the first engineering feat of any magnitude to be undertaken in connection with the railway. It is supported by some twenty iron piers sunk deep in the bed of the arm of the Indian Ocean that Government, and the whole of the necessary capital was raised in ter- minable annuities bearing interest at the rate of 3 per cent, per annum. All these will be paid off by 1929— just twenty years hence. The preliminary survey for the line A POINT BETWEEN MUANI AND SULTAN HAMOUD. separates Mom- basa from the mainland. These piers tower up to a considerable height in order to carry the bridge so far above high- water mark as to offer no impedi- ment to the free navigation of a channel which is much used by having been com- pleted from end to end in 1892, and the necessary money for the first section provided by the House of Commons, the actual work of con- struction was commenced in De- cember 1895. The length of the line, it may here be mentioned, from Mombasa to Port Florence is 584 miles, and there are thirty-nine stations, the principal being Mom- basa, Voi (103 miles from the coast), Makindu (209 miles), Nairobi (327 miles), Naivasha (391 miles), Nakuro (449 miles), and Port Florence. THE SALISBURY BRIDGE CONNECTING THE ISLAND OF MOMBASA WITH THE MAINLAND. Mombasa, the capital of the prov-