Railway Museum: Land of gone magic

A stationary train at the Railways Museum in Nairobi, one of the lesser known depositories of history. PHOTO| FILE

What you need to know:

  • The Railway Museum was established in 1971 by the then East Africa Railways and Harbours Corporation as a learning and resource centre on the history of rail travel in East Africa.
  • The British understood that rail travel was the most efficient way to economic growth; the railway line would open up the mainland, linking it to the strategic Kenyan coast.

I was secretly hoping I would catch the whiff of Meryl Streep’s perfume, maybe catch the sweep of her nightgown. It was an aesthete’s folly of course. But if you have watched the classic film Out of Africa; if you have, like me, replayed the scene where Meryl Streep, playing Karen Blixen — the Danish author and one of pioneer settlers — stands outside her coach as the train transporting her to Nairobi rounds up a corner, and smells the Kenyan highland air for the first time, then walks back in, her dog walking you can be excused for dreaming, for madness.

The movie, which also starred Robert Redford, would go on to sweep seven gongs at the Academy awards in 1986. I am at the Nairobi Railway Museum located behind the Technical University of Kenya, northeast of the capital.

I am in coach No. 301 — Streep’s train, which was built in 1923, retired in 1971 and roused from sleep to immortality for the famous movie.

If Nairobi is anything, it is history. It is in the previously Victorian-named streets, in its statues, in the trinkets and pictures in the national archives and the priceless collection of art in the main branch of the National Museums of Kenya. But of all the relics and emblems and buildings and places that house history, the Railway Museum, one of the lesser known of the depositories of history, is in a way the most central of all.

Indeed, the future capital of Kenya sprouted from the dust and mud as an outpost of the fledgling Mombasa-Uganda railway. Machakos had been the preferred terminus, but Nairobi-at the time known as Engore Nyrobi (Maasai name meaning ‘place of cool waters’ — eventually proved to be more valuable especially because of the streams that sped through the flatness.

The Railway Museum — which sits on a plot of land at the end of a dirt road lined with jacaranda — was established in 1971 by the then East Africa Railways and Harbours Corporation as a learning and resource centre on the history of rail travel in East Africa.

Run under the administration of the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), the museum has five sections: The Main Gallery that houses small artefacts; the Railway Art Gallery which was incorporated in 2012; a Resource Centre which has a library and also stores photographs; the auditorium, and the outdoor gallery — perhaps the biggest attraction of the five where locomotives from various eras are on display.

BIRTH OF HISTORY

The Kenya-Uganda railway was — and still remains — the most audacious and enduring of all the projects the British colonial government ever undertook.

The British understood that rail travel was the most efficient way to economic growth; the railway line would open up the mainland, linking it to the strategic Kenyan coast.

But it came under a terrible cost: by the time the construction of the line was completed in 1901, more than 2,500 people had died, casualty of tropical diseases, ambushes by combative communities opposed to the construction of the line; unbearable heat, and man-eating lions.

To fully understand and appreciate the enormity of the railway project; to fully acknowledge the ambition, and also the depth of the madness of a dream inside determined souls, a tour of the main gallery and the resource centre offers the best window.

It is a trip down an entire epoch spanning the history of Kenya from its infancy as a British protectorate to the attainment of self-rule and also the short-lived marriage of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, known as the East African Community.

There is a certain musty, almost frightening feel to the hall; a sepia-toned presence that immediately invokes and stirs history, like pages torn from a history course book.

The museum has a collection of relics dating back to the early 1900s: a calculator here an antiquated rotary telephone, a manual typewriter, a restored bicycle.

On the walls are framed photographs of men at work, natives and Indian hires from Karachi and Punjab; stern white men with handlebar moustaches in hats and khaki.

LION MAN-EATERS

In some of the pictures one can see the fear and world-weariness in the faces of the men. It is not difficult to suspect why, and also commiserate with the poor workers. There is a yellowed newsprint ad announcing a cash bounty of £100 for the capture of a pair of maneless lions, the so-christened man-eaters of Tsavo, the two cats that terrorised the camps with their preference for human veal.

It is estimated that the lions killed at least 28 workers, including Supt. Charles Ryall who was whisked from his carriage into the night by one of the cats while his guards sat scared in the carriage.

Of course the lions were eventually captured, their hides dried and lived on in infamy as doormats in faraway Chicago.

But a physical reminder of those terrifying times stays on in the museum.

Among the paraphernalia is a small box in which are stored the clipped claws of the lions. The nails have been in storage for 118 years.

“I knew about the lions from history,” a young man visiting the museum for the first time tells me, visibly concerned. “but to see this box, I can’t imagine how traumatised the railway builders were.”

THE LUNATIC EXPRESS

The railway line would come to be known as the Lunatic Express, a term credited to author Charles Miller in his book, The Lunatic Express: An Entertainment in Imperialism. He couldn’t have nailed it better.

Hardly anyone imagined the construction of a project of such scale, the snake from the south. To have undertaken the project called for a strain of lunacy.

It is a Saturday afternoon, and the Railway Museum grounds have taken on a carnival feel, like a movie set from the past. Among the old, retired locomotives roosting in the outdoor gallery, video cameramen are busy at work; a video for a song is afoot.

The director calls out instructions, the plan is to nail a vintage texture to the video.

It is not unusual to encounter such entourages: the railway museum is a popular photo and video shoot set.

Part of the estimated 7,000 visitors who buy a ticket at the gate are the beautiful people — models, actors. The near-charmed, endearingly crumbling grounds and its collection of locos appear to spin some celluloid magic.

On April 18, 2018, a journey, an asset that had been part of the country’s canvas came to an end. The last Mombasa-Nairobi passenger train hissed home after more than a hundred years of operation.

STANDARD GAUGE RAILWAY

The world had moved on, moved East and now a shining Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) line shone in the sun.

Out with the old and in with the new in one swell swoop; now there would be uniformed hostesses, the seats bearable, and the speed would double. The fear that had gripped the first curator, Fred Jordan, into creating the railway museum-the fear that there would come a time when the old would be done away with had come true. But even he would have something to say.

I was on that last southbound train, a trip I almost-missed, clambering up the staircase just as the train pulled out of the Nairobi terminus. I walked the narrow aisles of the train, looking for a story.

When I visited the third-class coach, I saw two men standing at the window, staring out. The light was low and the photograph I took of the pair — used-clothes traders from Mombasa — partly appeared in silhouette. There was a certain artistic sadness in their faces. They had travelled on the train for close to three decades.

* * *
Near the intersection of the Haile Selassie and Uhuru Highway avenues stands a large iron-sheet walled church with a big cross jutting into the sky.

When night creeps in, the cross lights up, only that none but one of the four beams has a working filament. The cross overlooks the railway museum, and when they turn on the light, the solo working bulb sends a flicker of light behind the church where all those long-retired trains repose.

It is an eerily beautiful sight, even fitting. In the broken light is Nairobi as it was when white men erected poles and strung wire across the growing town, one by one.

You hope the pioneering curator Fred Jordan would love it that way.