Friends of the Rail Forum

A train carrying members and supporters of Sudan’s opposition Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) arrived in Khartoum this morning to be greeted by throngs of ecstatic crowds.

As the train plied its way across Khartoum state to arrive in the centre of the city this afternoon, cheering crowds lined the rails...

The train from Atbara is important symbolically. It is the second time the train has made the journey to Khartoum. In April, hundreds of people rode on what activists called the ‘freedom train’, from the headquarters of the Sudanese Railways in Atbara to the capital Khartoum, to swell the sit-in outside the General Command of the Sudanese army, and to provide those already at the sit-in with food and supplies...

Atbara is also symbolic because while there have been sporadic uprisings of public anger in Sudan for years, it was the bread and fuel riots in Atbara on December 19, 2018 that, within three weeks, spread across the country...

People in Atbara, a colonial-era railway hub, support the national government in the capital some 350 km (220 miles) to the south, but say some of the main grievances which drove their uprising - poor salaries and unemployment - remain.

“Railway workers have among the lowest state salaries” earning as little as 1,200 Sudanese pounds ($26.67) a month while needing at least 10,000 pounds to get by, said Abdallah, who took over the union after Bashir’s ouster.

They also want funds to revive the railway — once Africa’s longest network but now largely derelict...

Atbara, at the junction of the Nile and Atbara rivers, has been a barometer for Sudan since British colonialists established a railway hub here, building dozens of villas to house railway managers which now lie empty.

Maps entitled “Sudan railways” still hang on walls in administrative buildings where receipts printed in English and Sudanese lie on abandoned desks...