Foreword: This book, which is the official history of the development of the railway, ports and inland waterways in Kenya and Uganda, is a record of human endeavour; not only of physical endurance, but also of the effort necessary to convince Parliament at the end of the last century of the necessity to open the country by the building of the railway, also of the endeavour of developing the railway, once it had been built, into an efficient transport system designed to serve the best interests of the people of East Africa.

First Words: Great historians have declared that the major aim of Napoleon Buonaparte was not so much to achieve the hegemony of Europe as to wrest from England the command of the seas and to acquire for France an empire beyond the seas.