Constructing a rail line through the Nuskhi Desert in 1918

[Trans-Baluchistan Railroad]. [Photograph Album - Nushki Extension Railway].

€ 2,500.00

A unique photograph album of one of the great cross-desert railroad projects of World War I, following the construction of the Nuskhi Extension Railway from Quetta in British-colonized Pakistan to what is now Zahedan in Iran. Crossing the Nuskhi desert and travelling within sight of the only active volcano in Pakistan, this line is also known as the Trans-Baluchistan railroad, and was proposed by the British as military infrastructure. However, it was later opened to the general populace, and was for some time the main connection between Pakistan and Iran; today a highway runs alongside it.

Railway construction is photographed by a British soldier who labelled the album in full: "Photographs illustrating nine months spent with the 71st Field Company 3rd Sappers & Miners on the Nuskhi Extension Railway, Lines of Communication, and in the Eastern Persian Cordon. July 1918 - March 1919". These include views of Nushki Station, the British Engineer in Chief of the "N.E. Railway" (along with another Brit named Craken, who is "an Executive Engineer on the fly"), and many scenes of work or making camp, including men making surveys, digging railroad cuttings, and laying rails across the difficult terrain of the Nushki Desert. The officers in charge are men from Britain and Punjab, but the workers include British soldiers, men from Punjab and Maratha, and a crew of Hazaras, a group generally associated with what is now Afghanistan. The anonymous British soldier even photographed an ad-hoc celebration of the festival of Dahi Handi (he calls it a "Gorinda Festival"), where a melon has been used in place of the traditional clay pot of butter.