Qualla: Sierra Leone National Railway Museum

Sierra Leone National Railway Museum: Introduction

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Davidbstanley at wts wikivoyage, Public domain. For years the story was simply that they were gone. The locomotives of the old Sierra Leone Government Railway - the engines that had once carried the country to itself - were said to have been destroyed during the long civil war, melted down or looted or rotted away in some forgotten yard. Then a British army officer with a love of trains went looking. What Colonel Steve Davies found, hidden in a dockside workshop in Freetown that had become a shelter for displaced families, was a treasure that should not have survived. It had.

Image: User: (WT-shared) Davidbstanley at wts wikivoyage | Public domain

Sierra Leone National Railway Museum: A Railway and Its Ghost

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Davidbstanley at wts wikivoyage, Public domain. The Sierra Leone Government Railway ran on tracks just two feet six inches apart - a narrow gauge that wound from Freetown deep into the interior, knitting the country together for the better part of a century. On the recommendation of an international bank, it was closed in 1974...

Image: User: (WT-shared) Davidbstanley at wts wikivoyage | Public domain

Sierra Leone National Railway Museum: The Giant and the Queen's Coach

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Davidbstanley at wts wikivoyage, Public domain. The crown jewels of the collection are two very different machines. One is a Beyer-Garratt steam locomotive - an articulated 4-8-2 + 2-8-4 monster built in Manchester in 1955, which, at around seventy tons, ranks among the heaviest and most powerful engines ever to run on a two-f...

Image: User: (WT-shared) Davidbstanley at wts wikivoyage | Public domain

Sierra Leone National Railway Museum: Rescued Twice

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Davidbstanley at wts wikivoyage, Public domain. The collection's survival is almost miraculous. Through the years of civil war the workshops were occupied as a centre for displaced persons, and the engines vanished from public view - many assumed them lost for good. When Colonel Davies rediscovered them, restoration began in 2...

Image: User: (WT-shared) Davidbstanley at wts wikivoyage | Public domain