BUILDING the East African LUNATIC LINE - 1896 - 1901
KEVIN PATIENCE SpeakerNet Sponsor
- Region:
- Anywhere
- Notice Period:
- Emergency (maybe less than one week's notice)
- Type:
- Hobby
- Fee:
- Paid: £70
- Category:
- History
- Updated:
- 29th April 2026
- Tagged:
- Railways / East Africa / 19Th Century | 1900S
The story of Victorian railway engineering at its best. Ronald Preston and Florence his wife led a team of Indians building a metre gauge line across the hazards of British East Africa from Mombasa to Lake Victoria, including the infamous 'Man-eating lions of Tsavo' and descending the great Rift Valley.
Views: 1701 | Enquiries: 1About KEVIN PATIENCE
I grew up in Kenya and served in the Royal Air Force, who also taught me to dive. On leaving the service I completed a commercial diving course, returned to Mombasa and was involved in salvage operations on the Kenya coast. In 1976 I published my first book on East African railway history and in 1977 became a commercial diver based in Bahrain and established a marine salvage company. In 1982 I was appointed MD of a Kenya diving company in Mombasa responsible for operations in East Africa and later returned to Bahrain establishing a new diving company with contracts in the Gulf and East Africa. With an interest in military history I was involved in the restoration of British Forces graves in Bahrain, and the recovery at sea of a propeller from a crashed Air France airliner as a memorial to those killed, and honoured by the French government with The National Order of Merit. (Chevalier). In the 1990s I published a number of books on the military and transport history of East Africa and an acclaimed study of the German cruiser ‘Königsberg’ sunk in East Africa in 1915. In recent years I co-organised steam train safaris in East Africa and led World War 1 Kenya battlefield tours. Now resident in the UK, writing and research continues together with the restoration of vintage Rolls-Royce motor cars and presenting talks on a variety of subjects.
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