Our history
We have come a long way since the first Railway services were launched in Uganda. Take a look at our history
The Uganda Railway was named after its ultimate destination and its entire original kilometre (660 mi) length lies in present day Kenya. Construction began at the port city of Mombasa in British East Africa in 1896 and finished at the line’s terminus, Kisumu, on the Eastern shore of Lake Victoria in 1901. The MGR Network in Uganda was mostly laid out between 1920s and 1960s to link the interior of Uganda and Kenya with Indian Ocean port of Mombasa in Kenya. In 2006, the Governments of Uganda and Kenya decided to jointly concession out the assets of the two representative countries’ Railway Corporations to a private consortium in order to improve on the efficiency of their Railway systems. The RVR consortium was established to manage the railways of Kenya and Uganda. Due to poor performance of the RVR i.e. defaulting on key concession obligations like payment of concession fees, maintenance of conceded asses and growing rail freight volumes, the concession was dissolved and URC tool charge of the railway operations in a bid to revamp the railway structure in Uganda.
- 2023 - Tororo - Gulu Rehabilitation works are launched
- 2023 - Rehabilitation works on Kampala – Mukono commence. Kampala – Namanve section was completed. Works on Namanve - Mukono ongoing
- 2022 - Emergency works on Mukono - Malaba commence. These have been completed
- 2021 - URC acquires 4 New Main Locomotives to aid in its transformation drive
- 2020 - Construction of Gulu Logistics Hub commences. Phase One has since been completed
- 2018 - URC takes over the railway operations, passenger service and operations of MV Kaawa resume
- 2017 - End of RVR concession