track measured from the centre of the rails, or and , respectively, on the inside faces. Construction Construction began from the Red Sea port city of Massawa in 1887, heading towards the capital city of Asmara. The "Decauville" railway was the first built, from Massaua to Saati, just 27 km. Progress was slow, thanks to the long climb up the mountains to the high plateau of inland Eritrea, and the substantial civil engineering works required; the line reached Asmara in 1911. It was extended to Keren in 1922, Agat in 1925, Agordat in 1928, and finally Bishia in 1932, for a total length of . Bishia (Biscia in Italian) proved to be the end, even though the builders had ambitions of reaching the Sudan Railways line. Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia led to resources being diverted elsewhere, including the upgrading of the line from Massawa to Asmara to handle more traffic. Building the line from Massawa to Asmara was a significant undertaking. Even with the tighter turns and narrower right-of-way allowed by a narrow gauge railway, the line required 65 bridges (including a fourteen-arch viaduct crossing the Obel River) and 39 tunnels, the longest being . Even so, there were still grades of more than 3%. The highest point on the railway is just east of Asmara at above sea level. The construction of the railway was considered a fine achievement of the first half of the twentieth century. In operation In 1935, it carried supplies for the Italian war effort in Ethiopia and the line saw 30 trains daily, while by 1965 the line was carrying nearly half a million passengers a year as well as 200,000 tons of freight. Things went downhill from there. Improvements to the road from Massawa to Asmara, and to the trucks and buses that used it, began to take traffic away from the railway. Until 1941, the railway was controlled by the Italians, but the fortunes of war allowed the British to take control. After 1942, the railway (damaged during the East Africa Campaign and by Italian guerrillas) was abandoned from Agordat to Biscia. In 1953, Eritrea was joined to Ethiopia in Federation as the British pulled out, giving Ethiopia a coastline, but starting off 40 years of unrest and eventually war. The first Director General of the railway was Yacob Zanios, a former railway executive from Dire Dawa, who was appointed by HIM