Trans-Saharan Railway

The first detailed proposals were put forward by Alphonse Duponchel, a civil engineer who produced a report commissioned by Chambers of Commerce in Marseilles and Montpellier (Duponchel, 1875-1878), and the African explorer Paul Soleillet, who outlined a similar scheme in a report to the Ministry of Public Works (Gros, 1881). The idea was seized upon by ambitious politicians, notably Charles de Freycinet, an avid railway supporter who was spending millions of francs expanding the French domestic network as Minister of Public Works from 1877 to 1879. Freycinet established a commission of inquiry in 1879 to investigate the feasibility of a trans-Saharan railway and dispatched four expeditions to explore alternative routes, three to identify the best routes into the African interior from West Africa, the fourth and most important mission to establish a route across the desert interior. The... 

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