This article is part of the history of rail transport by country series The history of rail transport in Malawi began shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Transport by rail was introduced to British Central Africa Protectorate (BCA), the British protectorate occupying present-day Malawi, in 1904. Three years later, the name of the area was changed to Nyasaland. Railways have continued to serve the area ever since, including in the period since Malawi became independent in 1964. British colonial period Background From the 1890s, small river steamers operated between Chinde at the mouth of the Zambezi and Chiromo on the Lower Shire River, a distance of . However, the main areas of economic activity in the BCA were around Blantyre in the Shire Highlands, over from Chiromo, and transport to the river was costly and inefficient. Steamers also navigated the Upper Shire and Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi), but about of the Middle Shire was impassable. Railways could supplement water transport and, as the BCA was nowhere nearer than to a suitable Indian Ocean port, a short rail link to river ports was more practical than a line direct to the coast. Shire Highlands Railway Low Shire River levels after 1896 made water transport more difficult. In 1901, the Shire Highlands Railway Company was formed by Blantyre-based investors. It soon obtained a concession to build a railway from Port Herald (now Nsanje) on the Shire River at the southernmost point of the protectorate, to Fort Johnston (now Mangochi), at the southern end of Lake Nyasa, via Chiromo and Blantyre. The first section of this line, between Port Herald and Chiromo, was handed over to traffic on 1 September 1904. Further construction of the railway was greatly hampered by a difference in elevation of more than between Chiromo and Blantyre. The difficulties were so severe that the Shire Highlands Railway ran out of funds, with the consequence that another company, the British South Africa Company, assumed the task of completing the section, which was finally opened on 23 January 1909. Additional reductions in the Shire River's flow made Port Herald unsatisfactory, so a Zambezi port was needed. Central African Railway In 1914, the British South Africa Company built the Central African Railway of from Port Herald to Chindio on the north bank of the Zambezi. From there, goods went by river steamers to Chinde then by sea to Beira,