Friends of the Rail Forum

WHAT MAGLEV COULD ACHIEVE IN AFRICA

The Guardian article referred to in this link is How Japan's maglev train would handle the world's most epic journeys

Cape Town to Cairo – 17 hours 30 mins

What a dream railway journey – through South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. Sadly, it doesn’t exist. By car it takes 156 hours (and we’re not sure Google Maps takes adequate account of road surfacing). But you could be at the Pyramids in under a day’s travel from Cape Point if someone built a 10,441km (6487-mile) maglev across the continent.

My own journey driving from Nairobi to Pretoria in 2001 took a week, and that's less than half the distance from Cairo to the Cape, so I think 156 hours by road is rather an optimistic estimate. The roads were actually fine (which is not the case north of Nairobi) but it was the customs and immigration formalities at the borders which slowed us down. I wonder how the maglev would cope with that?!