Soudan Railways 4-8-0 Locomotives in Sudan

Class Dongola (Locobase 20339)

Data from "Locomotives for the Soudan [sic] Military Railway," Engineering, Volume 64 (23 July 1897), p.106; South African Railways & Harbours 9 -1941 Locomotive Diagrams supplied in August 2013 by Allen Stanley from his extensive Rail Data Exchange; and "South African Class 7A 4-8-0" in Wikipedia, last accessed 27 January 2018 at []. Works numbers were 5232-5234 in 1897; 5280-5281, 5345-5347 in 1898.

This octet of Twelve-wheelers duplicated the Cape Government Railways Class 7 locomotives (Locobase 16123) and wre ordered in 1897-1898 to operate on Lord Kitchener's military railway paralleling the Nile River south from Wadi Halfa 200 miles (122 km) to Kerma and the Third Cataract. He then built a 571 mile (919 km) line from Wadi Halfa across the Nubian Desert to Atbara (a name later applied to a class of British Great Western 4-4-0s described as Locobase 3577) and thence to Khartoum.

Engineering's data showed the very close similarity with the Class 7. The journal also reported that the specification include the requirement pull a trailing load of 206 tons up a 1 in 40 (2.5%) for 7 miles (11.3 km) and around curves as tight as 7 chains (462 ft) radius at an average speed of 6 1/2 mph (10 1/2 kph). Speed on the level was to reach 30 mph.

Each of these lines ran on a single track, which necessitated installing a second waterconnection from the boiler leading forward to the pilot. This allowed the locomotive to run cab forward and trail the tender behind the smokebox.

Dongola 26

Debbeh 27

Korti 28

Berber 29

Khartoum 30

Kassala 31

Atbara 32

Sennar 33

Wikipedia's account says that the Dongolas were never very popular and had been deleted from the railway's roster by 1914.