Owendo, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 9th Apr, 2025) Through dense equatorial rainforest the train steamed ahead along Gabon’s sole railway line, a vital yet unreliable cog shuttling minerals, people and timber — as well as the odd coffin — across the country.
“We’re forced to take the train. It’s not a choice,” said Aaron Houchi, a radiologist who comfortably sat in the plush red velvet of first class while en route to a funeral in the central town of Koulamoutou — with the deceased’s remains treated to their very own dedicated carriage.
But with its swinging suspension bridges and at times swampy foundations, the Transgabonais railway, whose first tracks were laid in the 1970s, is in desperate need of renovation to slam the breaks on the line’s degradation.
“We should have recorded between six and seven broken tracks across the entire line in one year,” said Christian Magni, director general of the Transgabonais’s operator Setrag.
Instead, the railway, which links the central African country’s mining regions to the capital Libreville and the Atlantic port of Owendo, had 1,000 broken tracks in 2022 and 650 in 2023.
The Transgabonais’s woes are symptomatic of the parlous state of the country’s infrastructure — a hot topic for Gabonese who will on Saturday vote to choose the first elected president since a 2023 coup.
