British imperial transport management: The Gold Coast Sekondi-Kumase railway, 1903-1911

The story of the first railway built in the British Colony of the Gold Coast has been discussed in a number of previous survey histories, several of which have been quite disparaging, even disdainful about the railway's initial design, financing and direction from London, local administrative organisation and subsequent operations.1 In the present article I shall attempt to develop a more balanced assessment by examining in statistical detail the first eight years of colonial railway operations and management and to place them in historical perspective. This study focuses on design and construction, personnel and administration, railway finance and accounting procedures, and capital investment and costs of servicing the railway debt. Despite the need to underscore weaknesses, it is also important to evaluate a transport project according to managerial and accounting techniques available at the time, and with due regard for the geographical and logistical problems of construction (including available earth-moving machinery) in the tropics, plus operations in a transitional peasant agricultural economy, rather than from a modern industrial perspective.It is well known that modern transport projects have a long gestation period. Even in the manufacturing regions of North America and western Europe the early histories of railroading were replete with instances of unsound engineering and design, inflated construction costs, shaky financing and half-built lines routed ahead of demand into unproductive areas, coupled with poor management leading to heavy debts or receivership.2 We have abundant examples of iron-willed captains of industry in Britain and the United States who experimented with a variety of ad hoc managerial and financing techniques, but who faltered many times and had to be bailed out by banks or the government before establishing their lines on a paying basis.3

Such problems and weaknesses were apt to be magnified in underdeveloped tropical territories with special difficulties bound up with high temperatures and humidity leading to the more rapid corrosion of machinery, uncertainty about the local geology for building earthworks and sinking bridge pylons, lack of necessary local building materiel, such as hard rock for ballast and steel and hard wood for track and cross-ties, the problem of transporting these materials and construction machinery over long distances prior to the railway's completion, coupled with the low level of literacy plus the inexperience of local work crews and machine maintenance personnel as compared, for example, with British India at this time.4 Added to these problems were low population densities, which severely curtailed labour recruitment, plus much needed passenger traffic and the expansion of consumer markets which could turn new lines in West Africa into paying propositions. A number of the previous histories have discounted, or have not taken suffi- cient cognisance of, these many constraints that made technological transfer slow and difficult. The present account is also critical of a number of aspects of initial railway design and early performance. However, a closer look at the statistical data and a comparison with other railways of the period (including the United States and Britain) suggests that the Gold Coast Railway achieved relative success at a faster rate than is commonly supposed.

It is true that it took ten years to put Gold Coast railways on a stable, remunerative footing. But it is important to bear in mind that, except for the needs and demands of the gold-mining companies,5 there was little ready-made business for the line. Much time had to be spent on publicity, juggling and balancing reduced rates on behalf of various interest groups, and providing other inducements in order to familiarise the indigenous people, as well as expatriates, with the advantages of mechanised transport and to generate a steady flow of bulk freight

After long years of prior petitioning and official discussions, plans for the first locomotive railroad in the Gold Coast Colony germinated in late 1895 under the leadership of Joseph Chamberlain, who had made the development of Britain's tropical Crown colonies one of the cornerstones of his tenure as Secretary of State for the Colonies. Instead of working through private contractors, the colonial State built the line under the auspices of its own government railway department.6 Early progress was painfully slow. After much wrangling over the choice of route, engineering surveys were not completed until late 1897 and work crews did not commence staking out the first leg of the line until 1898. Recruitment and maintenance of a full-time 'permanent' labour force proved an ongoing problem, relieved only in part by the colonial railway department's proffer of small pay inducements. Under pressure from the mining companies, government builders tried to speed up completion of the later stages of the line. The railhead reached the mining town of Tarwka in the state of Wasss Fiase in 1901, and it reached the major mining centre of Obuasi in Asante, a distance of 192 km (120 miles), in 1902. When completed to Kumase, the Asante capital, in 1903 the total length of the railway from Sekondi fell just a bit short of 269 km (168 miles; this includes five additional miles (8 km) beyond that shown on the accompanying