Senegal revives train line for religious festival
Dakar, Senegal — AFP
Senegal on Friday temporarily brought back into service a long-closed railway line to take worshippers to an annual religious festival.
Three trains, each capable of carrying 240 passengers, have been deployed on a 130-kilometre line between Thies and the holy town of Touba in central Senegal, the GTS railway company said.
Dozens of people, some of them dancing, gathered by the track at Thies to watch the delayed departure of the first four-carriage train, in old-fashioned green and grey livery, as witnessed by reporters.
“People are emotional about the train,” said GTS boss Samba Ndiaye. “Passengers are going to travel in comfort and knowing what time they’ll arrive.”
The service will run between till Wednesday, helping to ease roads clogged by cars and buses heading to Touba for the Grand Magal pilgrimage.
The festival is staged by the Mouride Brotherhood, one of Senegal’s four orders of Sufi Islam.
The temporary train service, which also has stops at Diourbel and Mbacke, is being presented as a foretaste of permanent restoration of railway traffic.
The line had been closed in 2018 due to lack of track maintenance. It started to change in December 2021 when a new 36-km line was inaugurated linking the capital Dakar with the new city of Diamniadio.
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