page_title: Compagnie minière de l'Ogooué
section_title: Trans-Gabon railway and port
hierarchical_section_title: Compagnie minière de l'Ogooué / Trans-Gabon railway and port
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Chargement de minerai sur le transgabonais
context_page_description: The Compagnie minière de l'Ogooué, or COMILOG, is a manganese mining and processing company based in Moanda, Gabon.
  It is a subsidiary of the French metallurgical group Eramet. The company is the world's second largest producer of manganese ore.
  At first the ore was carried by a cableway to the border with the Republic of the Congo, then by rail to the sea at Pointe-Noire.
  In the 1980s a railway was built to carry the ore through Gabon to the sea near Libreville.
context_section_description: Annual shipment volumes were at first limited to 2.7 million tons, the capacity of the cableway.
  Gabon experienced an economic expansion between 1973 and 1985 based on exports of petroleum, manganese, uranium and timber.
  The government used some of the proceeds to build the Trans-Gabon Railway between 1974 and 1986.
  It connected the new port being built at Owendo to Franceville on the upper Ogooué River and opened up the forests and mines of the interior.
  The only railway line in Gabon, it runs for 640 kilometres (400 mi) from Libreville to Franceville.
  The new railway was used to carry ore  from Moanda to the port of Owendo near Libreville.
  In 1985 six MaK G 1203 BB locomotives with Cummins engines were built by Maschinenbau Kiel for the OCTRA (Office du chemin de fer transgabonais) railway company.
  In 2003 the tracks were upgraded to increase train frequency, allowing greater volumes of ore shipment.
  In 2012 the railway carried an estimated 711,201 tons of merchandise and 255,930 passengers.
  At Owendo COMILOG operates a private ore shipment terminal and storage facilities with capacity for three months' production.
  The ore shipment port at Owendo was inaugurated in 1988, and the cableway was shut down in 1991.
  The company laid off 955 workers. The workers claimed compensation for unfair dismissal, but the case dragged out until September 2015, when the Court of Appeal of Paris ordered COMILOG to compensate the workers.
  After ore shipments stopped the Republic of the Congo expropriated the track and equipment in their country, worth about 60 billion CFA francs.
  The COMILOG railway in the DRC was taken over by the CFCO (Chemin de fer Congo-Océan) and is the main means of transport for people and goods north of Niari.
  The aerial cableway was sold to South Korea and dismantled in 1993.
caption: Ore trucks on the Trans-Gabon Railway
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