SGR

Silver Spoons

I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. This was just a popular sitcom that we used to watch on our wooden black and white TV back in the 80s. We were young then and couldn’t understand anything they said (the language of instruction in our school was kikuyu – even when learning English!). We would laugh when the offstage people laughed. We didn’t watch silver spoons to get the story. We watched it because the father in the programme had a small train that he would use to commute from one room to another. The train was so exciting for us that we never missed a single episode just to see it. That is my earliest recollection of anything to do with trains.

Standard Gauge Railway

Kenya has almost completed phase one of the Standard Gauge Railway line. This will effectively replace the soon to be retired line that supported the “Lunatic Express” which was powered by a steam engine. A lot has been said about the new railway, most of it negative and to do with ridiculously inflated costs, but I will not talk about that today. My chief aim is to demystify the technical aspects of the now ubiquitous news item. I know my fellow Laymen out there are hoping somebody will tell them why the government’s newest toy is so special and what makes it tick. Well brothers and sisters; you have come to the right place. Let’s jump right into learning mode.

What is Standard Gauge?

Before I can tell you what gauge is as it relates to railways, I need to explain to you in Layman’s (my) terms what a railway is comprised of. A railway consists of two main parts. These are the sleepers and the rails. Sleepers are laid at equal intervals across the track on a foundation of ballast. The rails (two of them) are then placed parallel to each other and fastened to the sleepers. The gauge is the distance between the two rails on which a train runs.

Apparently, there are very many railway gauges in use around the world. Beside miniature gauges used in specific locations, normal railway gauges range from half a metre (19.75 inches) used in Austria, Argentina, and France, to nine metres (about 29 feet and 6 inches) used as a ship elevator in Russia. Our old railway is one metre (about 3 feet and 3 inches) wide. Between these extremes, there are myriad sizes and variations.

Our new and exciting Standard Gauge Railway is 1.435 Metres (about 4 feet and 8.5 inches). It is wider than the old one by almost half a metre. The word ‘standard’ is used to denote the widespread use of this particular gauge around the world (specifically 55% of all countries). We all know that bigger is better. We therefore want to understand why a wider railway line is better than a narrow one. Let us look at the two main advantages of the wider railway.

Speed

A wider track also means a wider train. A wide train, just like a wide car, can take corners at a higher speed without toppling over. This translates to a higher average speed the train can maintain in the course of its journey. This is the reason our new trains will be able to do a top speed of 120 kilometres per hour for passengers and 100 kilometres per hour for goods (Our old train could only manage a measly top speed of about 50 kilometres per hour). This will enable travellers to cover the distance between Mombasa and Nairobi in just four and a half hours as opposed to more than 12 hours previously.

Load Capacity

The foundation of the standard gauge is wider and therefore can handle more weight. Our new trains will be able to carry more weight for the same length of carriages. This is a good thing because we can now transport more goods per unit operating cost. It also means that we can fit more people into the same train.

Standard Gullibility Repertoire

The president has just reported that he is unable to handle corruption. This (coming less than a year to elections) is supposed to work on our sympathetic sides. It is intended to tug on our heart strings and make us say, “Woishe, he is trying so hard and he is so human after all!” Kenyans are gullible to a fault especially when they listen to senior politicians. That is the reason this form of repertoire from our president will work in his favour.

Once upon a time, a blogger, not much different from the Layman, was jailed for insulting the president. It was a quick case and the blogger was checked in as a guest of the state in a remarkably short time. This informs me that if the president wants somebody “in” that somebody will be in before he has time to say SGR. So as you can see, SGR can mean a lot of things in Kenya. Can you think of any other? Over to you.