Girouard was sent to England to buy the plant and rolling stock.  Fifteen new engines and two hundred trucks were ordered.  The necessary new workshops were commenced at Halfa.  Experienced mechanics were procured to direct them.  Fifteen hundred additional men were enlisted in the Railway Battalion and trained.  Then the water question was dealt with.  The reconnoitring surveys had reported that though the line was certainly ‘good and easy’ for 110 miles—­and, according to Arab accounts, for the remaining 120 miles—­no drop of water was to be found, and only two likely spots for wells were noted.  Camel transport was, of course, out of the question.  Each engine must first of all haul enough water to carry it to Railhead and back, besides a reserve against accidents.  It was evident that the quantity of water required by any locomotive would continually increase as the work progressed and the distance grew greater, until finally the material trains would have one-third of their carrying power absorbed in transporting the water for their own consumption.  The amount of water necessary is largely dependent on the grades of the line.  The ‘flat desert’ proved to be a steady slope up to a height of 1,600 feet above Halfa, and the calculations were further complicated.  The difficulty had, however, to be faced, and a hundred 1,500-gallon tanks were procured.  These were mounted on trucks and connected by hose; and the most striking characteristic of the trains of the Soudan military railway was the long succession of enormous boxes on wheels, on which the motive power of the engine and the lives of the passengers depended.

The first spadeful of sand of the Desert Railway was turned on the first day of 1897; but until May, when the line to Kerma was finished, no great efforts were made, and only forty miles of track had been laid.  In the meanwhile the men of the new Railway Battalion were being trained; the plant was steadily accumulating; engines, rolling stock, and material of all sorts had arrived from England.  From the growing workshops at Wady Halfa the continual clatter and clang of hammers and the black smoke of manufacture rose to the African sky.  The malodorous incense of civilisation was offered to the startled gods of Egypt.  All this was preparation; nor was it until the 8th of May that track-laying into the desert was begun in earnest.  The whole of the construction gangs and railroad staff were brought from Kerma to Wady Halfa, and the daring pioneers of modern war started on their long march through the wilderness, dragging their railway behind them—­safe and sure road which infantry, cavalry, guns, and gunboats might follow with speed and convenience.