The newest pictures from Kenya on Railpictures are already several years old. Unfortunately I don't have a current picture either, but for my 8000th contribution on RP.net I chose a photo from the year 2011; one of the biggest Garratt steam locomotives ever built, the oil-fired 4-8-2+2-8-4 class 59 of the East African Railways on 1 meter gauge. They were built by Beyer Peacock and entered service in 1955–56, and were the largest, heaviest and most powerful steam locomotives to operate on any metre gauge railway in the world. The 34 "Mountain" class (all with names of african mountains) locomotives were built mainly for the mainline from Mombasa to Nairobi and capable of pulling 1200 ton trains on grades of 1.5 %, and were the mainstay of freight services on this 330-mile run until the late 1970s. # 5930 "Mount Shenega" is preserved in Nairobi Railway Museum, while 5918 "Mount Gelai" was operational in 2011 in poor condition. Tanago from Germany and Goeff's Trains (Goeff Cooke) from the UK organised some steam trains in Kenya in May 2011. The # 5918 is seen running from the shed to the station to pull a charter train. The train was scheduled to leave in the morning, but it was about 4 PM when it finally was ready. Only a few kilometers outside the city the locomotive failed with a broken super heater pipe, all steam was lost into the air. The passengers returned back later by a bus, the train was evacuated by a diesel loc in the evening hours. As far as I know, sadly the locomotive was not repaired yet and never ran again since this day in may 2011.
