The Kafue Railway Bridge was built to carry the Livingstone

Livingstone, Zambia

Livingstone or Maramba is a historic colonial city and present capital of the Southern Province of Zambia, a tourism centre for the Victoria Falls lying north of the Zambezi River, and a border town with road and rail connections to Zimbabwe on the other side of the Falls...

 to Lusaka

Lusaka

Lusaka is the capital and largest city of Zambia. It is located in the southern part of the central plateau, at an elevation of about 1,300 metres . It has a population of about 1.7 million . It is a commercial centre as well as the centre of government, and the four main highways of Zambia head...

 railway line in what is now Zambia

Zambia

Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....

 over the Kafue River

Kafue River

The Kafue River sustains one of the world's great wildlife environments. It is a major tributary of the Zambezi, and of Zambia's principal rivers, it is the most central and the most urban, and the longest and largest lying wholly within Zambia....

 in 1906. It is a steel girder truss bridge

Truss bridge

A truss bridge is a bridge composed of connected elements which may be stressed from tension, compression, or sometimes both in response to dynamic loads. Truss bridges are one of the oldest types of modern bridges...

 of 13 spans each of 33 metres (108.3 ft) supported on concrete piers. It was built for Mashonaland Railways, later merged into Rhodesian Railways which operated the line from 1927 until succeeded in Zambia by Zambia Railways

Zambia Railways

Zambia Railways is the national railway of Zambia, one of the two major railroad organizations in Zambia, which may also be referred to as Railway Systems of Zambia...

 in 1966.

With a length of 427 metres (1,400.9 ft) the Kafue Railway Bridge was the longest bridge on the Rhodesian Railways network. It includes nearly 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) of embankments raised about 7 metres (23 ft) where the line crosses the river's wider rainy season channel, and a lower embankment about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) long where it crosses the river's the shallower floodplain to the south-west of the bridge.

The town of Kafue

Kafue

Kafue is a town in the Lusaka Province of Zambia on the north bank of the Kafue River, after which it is named. It is the southern gateway to the central Zambian plateau on which Lusaka and the mining towns of Kabwe and the Copperbelt are located.- Site :...

 is at the bridge's northern end and the Kafue Bridge on the Great North Road

Great North Road (Zambia)

The Great North Road is a major route in Zambia, running north from Lusaka through Kabwe, Kapiri Mposhi Serenje, Mpika, Kasama, Mbala and Mpulungu. 82km North of Mpika is a signposted left turn onto a well maintained gravel road leading to Shiwa Ng'andu and Kapishya Hot Springs...

is 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) downstream.