Talk:Rail transport in Sudan

Official page

It's worth noting that the Sudan Railways Corp.'s official page's Historical Background discusses Isma'il Pasha's initial line but muffs the English. The 165 mi (266 km) distance was not (even possibly) "reached" in 1875: the railway barely got the 30 mi (48 km) distance to Sarras two years later. What is apparently meant was that the line was formally proposed (and possibly initially funded) beginning in 1875 with the intention of reaching some place 165 miles distant which was somehow romanized as "Umbacall", although Google seems to have no idea where it is. (You can go to page 88 here or just CTRL+F for "Umbacall". He seems to have picked up that place name from the SRC's site, though.)

165 miles doesn't get them to Abu Hamad and that wasn't the route anyway. Isma'il seemed to want to follow the river along its various settlements. According to these guys, 165 miles is just south of what Google Maps calls "Abu Sari". It shows some settlement further upstream but doesn't have a modern name for them. (Possibly, they're just simple estates or farmsteads now.) It's OR until someone publishes it, but based on this distance and this map it seems to have been a name for whatever the settlement was towards the end of the Second Cataract, although this period map seems to call that "Kosheh" or "Absarat". — LlywelynII 07:15, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh, well, that cataract map lists one of them as "Ambigol", which is presumably what was meant. Unfortunately, it's at the head of the cataracts; seems well short (at 56 mi) of the claimed 165 miles; and is still further along than Sarras and so presumably wasn't reached either... Now, I'm thoroughly confused. — LlywelynII 07:41, 13 February 2014 (UTC)