Building Railroads in the Sand

Etihad Rail Package 2A, Ruwais, Al Dhafra, UAE

What the heck! Might as well post these railways photos also! It’s a Project I sort of hitchhiked on. Didn’t do a thing, except gave some advice and attended some meetings, and in the process learned from it. So, you could say, I gained more from the Project than it gained from me, ahem.

What happened was that the management put the responsibility for this project’s closeout on the Close-Out Department, of which yours truly was a part of. (This was despite the Railway Project’s Team's insistence that they had the resources to close it out, and that they would close it out themselves). So, my good ‘ol Project Manager (of the Close-Out Dept) decided to assign this to me to follow up. (Well, it was sort of, out of the way, you know?) Umm… actually, it was, WAY OUT of the way, in the desert, at the tail end (or the head end, depends on how you see it) of the UAE, the part that connects to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Nobody from Dubai or the Northern Emirates, goes there, except if you wanna drive to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and beyond, or if you need to build a friggin railroad. The start of that Project is about 330km from our office in Dubai (3.5 hours drive there, and another 3.5 hours back, good thing that the speed limit in those parts are 160 km/h). And that’s how I end up being connected with this Project.

Anyway, those railway guys successfully closed out the Project at the end of last year, without much help from the Close-Out Department, frankly. Kudos guys! Here’re a few photos of the Etihad Rail Package 2A Project, from Ruwais in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi (aka Al Dhafra) to Ghweifat on the Saudi border, for your pleasure.


The Etihad Railway, Package 2A, from Ruwais to Ghweifat


As you can see, it’s surrounded by desert sand, for as far as you can see… One of the main challenges was ‘sand mitigation’ i.e. how to stop the sand from getting onto the railroad. And as you would’ve guessed, it’s next to impossible. You could only ‘mitigate’ it, by putting some preventive measures, and doing a lot of maintenance (which isn’t our job)… Those bunds and channels are part of the preventive measures


A culvert below the railway


And here’s a railway exhibition in Abu Dhabi’s ADNEC Centre… where our company was one of the presenters. (ADNEC by the way means Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, duh). That’s Kamran Taraz, on the podium, the Project Controls Manager of the Project. He’s left the Company. I heard he may be in the US. (He’s an Iranian, who isn’t a supporter of mullah-rule)


A train! That’s just a model… ADNEC Centre, Abu Dhabi. Hmmm, when will we be able to travel by train to Saudi or Qatar…?