Main line under constructionThe 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in)
Cape gauge ZR main line was built during
British administration as part of the vision of the
Cape-Cairo railway promoted by
Cecil Rhodes. His
British South Africa Company partnered with a number of railway companies to build the first line north from
South Africa, reaching
Bulawayo in
Southern Rhodesia in 1899. From there it was extended north to the coal mines at
Hwange in 1903, which supplied power for the railway. The economic spur to continue going north was to access the lead and zinc mine of
Broken Hill (now
Kabwe) and the surface copper mines of
Katanga. From Hwange, the railway reached
Victoria Falls in 1904, just across the
Zambezi from (then)
North-Western Rhodesia, part of the future Zambia. However before
Victoria Falls Bridge was completed in late 1905, the first railway constructed in Zambia was the 150-km
Livingstone-
Kalomo line completed in early 1905, with oxen-hauled wagons. Then a single locomotive was conveyed in pieces by cableway across the
Zambezi gorge. This enabled trains to operate as far as Kalomo before connection from the main line from the south. It inherited about
80–90 locomotives based at Kabwe, as well as passenger coaches and freight wagons..
Mulobezi Railway Zambia Railways operates the
Mulobezi Railway, a branch line from
Livingstone, built as a private timber line in the 1920s.
Njanji Commuter Service/Mulungushi Railway (Lusaka) Njanji Commuter Service (NCS), initially called Mulungushi Railway, was a low-cost cape gauge urban railway in
Lusaka running about 13 km between Chilenji in the inner south-east and George Township/Industrial area in the inner north-west via the central mainline station. It was built by the then state-owned mining company
Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) for the government, and opened in 1991. The track from Chilenji to the main line was new, the rest used existing lines and freight sidings. ZCCM used the same locomotives and coaches for the line as for their mine worker trains, shown here at the
Nkana Mine. The coaches were made locally by attaching
Tata bus bodies to mine wagon bases. In 1995 with the privatisation of ZCCM it was transferred to Zambia Railways, which renamed it Njanji Commuter Service. NCS collapsed in 1998 after only seven years of operation due to the economic climate in Zambia. An era of privatisation began. ZR and NCS could not compete with private buses. As of March 2026 the northwestern freight sidings are mostly still in place, as is the central section of mainline track, but the southeastern section of track has mostly disappeared. Lusaka City Council intended to keep the corridor for a future revival of the line. However a failure to mark it, and lax enforcement of planning laws resulted in some parts of it being built over in Libala and Kabwata. Legal action was taken in 2023 to remove some structures built over it. There have been several proposals to revive ZCS since it closed. In the mid-2010s the name Njanji Commuter Service was applied to a ZR urban service on the mainline between Lilayi, 7 km south, and Ngwerere, 15 km north of Lusaka Station. The trains used the same rolling stock as the Michael Chilufya Sata Express between Livingstone and Kitwe. However it was reported in 2017 as making losses.
Maamba Colliery Railway (branch line) In the 1960s and before, smelting of copper ore in the Copperbelt relied on coal transported by Rhodesia Railways from the
Hwange Colliery in (then)
Southern Rhodesia. After the
Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 newly independent Zambia endeavoured to reduce trade with its ideologically-opposed southern neighbour and in 1968 started to develop the Maamba Colliery about 70 km south of
Choma. A branch line was built from Choma to Masuku, 8 km from the colliery, and due to the difficult terrain a
material ropeway was constructed to carry the coal from colliery to railhead. By the early 2000s copper smelting in Zambia had declined due to low prices and the remaining production had switched to modern smelting using electricity from
Kariba Dam. The colliery fell into disuse and so did the railway branch line and the ropeway. As of 2026 the railway and ropeway remain disused. When the colliery was revived by the construction of
Maamba Coal Power Station in the 2010s, a new road was built from Batoka and road transport is now used instead. ==Railway Systems of Zambia==