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Lomé–Kpalimé railway

railway line in Togo

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 15, 2025
Entity authorityQ802678
Source-derived summary

The Lomé–Kpalimé railway was the second railway line built in today's Togo. It was also called Inlandbahn or Kakao-Bahn (cocoa railway).

History

The railway line was built during the German colonial era. Planning started in 1902, and construction began in 1904. Construction was financed through a 7.8 million Mark loan to the protectorate, with an interest rate of 3.5%. The german company Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg was entrusted with the construction and the operation left to Lenz & Co. Noepe was reached in 1905; Kpalimé was reached in 1907. The line opened on 27 January 1907, the birthday of Wilhelm II. It was built in meter gauge, had a length of 119 km (74 mi) and was accompanied by a telephone line. The level crossings were equipped with signals to ring bells. The line used the station at Lomé of the Lomé–Aného railway as a terminus.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lomé–Kpalimé railway” is railway line in Togo. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lomé, Kpalimé and railway, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1902, 1904, 1905, 1907—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Lomé, Kpalimé and railway is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “railway line in Togo” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q802678. Authority coordinates are 6.162, 1.211. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1902, 1904, 1905 and 1907.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Lomé–Kpalimé railway primary sources, Lomé–Kpalimé railway archive and Lomé research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lomé–Kpalimé railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.