The railway systems of Nigeria were not just railways replacing another mode of transport. They were pioneers in the opening up of the country to development and contact with the outside world. This prodigious three-volume narrative sets out to explore those systems from their very beginning in the 1890s through their tortuous development to the closing decades of the twentieth century. The first volume starts with exploration, geography and demographic studies and covers the basics of the railway system: locomotives, rolling stock, permanent way, bridging, and signalling applications. The maintenance of these assets is then described followed by fuel examination and water supply exploration. The second volume covers the economic and political history for each of the nine railway and tramway systems traversing the country. Emphasis is given to time and place in the prevailing environment. In the third volume operational facilities and commercial practice are each described under three heads: crime, health, training, storekeeping and railway road transport are given a historical perspective. The whole is summed up under organisation, accounts and statistics while staff and industrial relations have their place, followed by short biographies of departmental heads.
The railway systems of Nigeria were not just railways replacing another mode of transport. They were pioneers in the opening up of the country to development and contact with the outside world. This prodigious three-volume narrative sets out to explore those systems from their very beginning in the 1890s through their tortuous development to the closing decades of the twentieth century. The first volume starts with exploration, geography and demographic studies and covers the basics of the railway system: locomotives, rolling stock, permanent way, bridging, and signalling applications. The maintenance of these assets is then described followed by fuel examination and water supply exploration. The second volume covers the economic and political history for each of the nine railway and tramway systems traversing the country. Emphasis is given to time and place in the prevailing environment. In the third volume operational facilities and commercial practice are each described under three heads: crime, health, training, storekeeping and railway road transport are given a historical perspective. The whole is summed up under organisation, accounts and statistics while staff and industrial relations have their place, followed by short biographies of departmental heads.
Über den Autor
Francis Jaekel was born on 18th April 1913 and was educated at St. Albans School and Derby Technical College. He received his technical training at the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company, The Asiatic Petroleum Company Limited and Great Southern Railway, Ireland. He was appointed to the colonial service in 1938 and served the Nigerian Railway in seventeen officer positions over twenty-seven years. During the Second World War, he was commissioned in the West African Engineers, Nigeria Regiment. He later spent ten years with the Ministry of Defence London on military bridging for which work he was awarded the Order of the British Empire. His last position was as project engineer for Marubeni Corporation of Tokyo on behalf of De Leuw Chadwick OhEocha of Ilford in the field of Nigerian telecommunications. Mr Jaekel, a chartered and European engineer, is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Member of the Institution of Royal Engineers and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Transport, Permanent Way Institution, Royal Geographical Society and Zoological Society of London. He now lives in retirement with his wife, Madge, is the county of Lincolnshire, England.
