On Friday, Senegal temporarily reactivated a long-dormant railway line to transport worshippers to an annual religious festival.
The GTS railway company announced the deployment of three trains, each capable of carrying 240 passengers, on a 130-kilometer route between Thies and the sacred town of Touba in central Senegal.
Dozens of people, some of whom were dancing, gathered by the tracks in Thies to witness the delayed departure of the first four-carriage train, adorned in old-fashioned green and grey livery, as observed by an AFP reporter.
Samba Ndiaye, the head of GTS, remarked, “People are emotional about the train. All the seats for today’s departures have already been sold. Passengers are going to travel in comfort and knowing what time they’ll arrive.”
This temporary train service will operate from Friday to the following Wednesday, helping alleviate the congestion on roads filled with cars and buses heading to Touba for the Grand Magal pilgrimage. The festival is organized by the Mouride Brotherhood, one of Senegal’s four Sufi Islam orders.
The reintroduction of this train service, with stops at Diourbel and Mbacke, is presented as a preview of the potential permanent restoration of railway traffic. The Thies-Touba line had been closed in 2018, and it is part of a network that France built in the 19th and early 20th centuries to connect its colonies in West Africa.
The network in Senegal had fallen into disuse due to a lack of track maintenance. However, this situation began to change in December 2021 when a new 36-kilometer line was inaugurated, connecting the capital Dakar to the new city of Diamniadio.