The railway transport sector has come a long way. Railways were introduced in England in the seventeenth century as a way to reduce friction in moving heavily loaded wheeled vehicles.

In East Africa, the metre-gauge railway (Kenya-Uganda Railway) was built by British colonialists between 1896 and 1901, starting in the port city of Mombasa on the coast of the Indian Ocean and extending northwest to stop at Port Florence, now Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria.