Teams of people, mostly volunteers, were sent to scour the countryside for rails and sleepers.With the dogged self-reliance and resourcefulness characteristic of Eritreans, the railway committee decided to use home-grown know-how to rebuild the system."We approached various countries to get quotations for repair work", said Amanuel Ghebreselassie, head of the railway rehabilitation project. Only Asmara station, with its stores, workshops and running shed, had been untouched by the conflict.Two years after the liberation, in the same year as Eritrea officially declared its independence from Ethiopia, the EPLF government started making plans for the reconstruction of the railway. In the Peak District, for example, 80 per cent of planning applications are approved.Nor are the National Parks short of a "mission statement". The 1995 Act summed up their purposes: conserving and enhancing the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage; promoting opportunities for understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of those areas; and fostering the economic and social well-being of local communities ... The engines and carriages languished, rusting and broken, in sidings, while the stations were almost completely destroyed. Up to 80,000 people, including 60,000 EPLF fighters, had died in the struggle - Mr Cardelli lost a son at the front line. Countless thousands of people were disabled, and nearly three- quarters of a million had fled abroad, most of them into neighbouring Sudan.With the economy in ruins and the soil barren from neglect, nearly everything in Eritrea - a country the size of England - had to be rebuilt from scratch.The two railway lines - the 70 miles which linked the capital with the coast, and the 120 miles which ran from Asmara to Agordat in the interior - had been literally scattered about the countryside.

In 1935 it was used by the Italians to facilitate their invasion of Ethiopia. During the 1940s, when Eritrea was a British protectorate, the line was temporarily extended to link with the Anglo-Egyptian condominium of Sudan.By 1991, when fighters of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) marched into Asmara and freed their country from three decades of Ethiopian occupation, the railway was but another ravaged feature of their war-torn land. After the railway's demise, Eritrea's struggle for freedom was to continue for another 15 years, making it the longest war in modern African history.The railway, begun in 1887 in the dawn of the Italian colonial rule, occupies a central role in Eritrean history. Soldiers favoured the steel rails and sleepers for shoring up their trenches.Railmen did their best to make repairs but eventually gave up. Then, for 20 years, I had no job because the trains were not going during the war. Now here I am back at work."It was 1976 when the last train travelled from Asmara to the town of Massawa on the Red Sea.

After 15 years of fighting between Eritrea and its southern neighbour, Ethiopia, it became impossible to maintain the line. More than a dozenhoary-headed elders have joined him in helping to restart the steam locomotives. Some of the trains are nearly as old as Mr Cardelli. "I am happy, especially when I hear the trains whistle," said the septuagenarian mechanic "I love working with the trains For 33 years I was employed on the railway. "Tolerance went out of the window in favour of Pat Buchanan and [televangelist] Pat Robertson," a Clinton aide declared, "and that's frightening." Far less binding than a British party manifesto, the Republican platform as such will be quickly forgotten once the convention is over - but not its harsh language on abortion.. His colleagues in the railway yard call him Hakim nai Transport - Doctor Transport. It is their little joke, but also a mark of respect for a veteran worker who has come out of retirement to help restore Eritrea's once venerable railway system. At 76, Gherezghiher Cardelli is the oldest man at work on the restoration project.

But he is by no means the only old-timer busy with spanner and wrench in the railway yard of Eritrea's highland capital, Asmara. But it may prove to have been bought at the cost of still more votes of women, who already prefer President Bill Clinton to Mr Dole by an almost two-to-one margin.Ann Stone, head of the Republicans for Choice group, warned yesterday that this week's events suggested Mr Dole had less clout in the party than the religious right: "And Bob Dole can't afford to have that message come across: either he's in charge or they are."The same point was being made by a gleeful White House, savouring more ammunition to portray the Republicans as rabidly extremist. Despite an early lead and the backing of the Kansas party establishment, she is trailing state representative Sam Brownback, a fiercely pro-life conservative.Ralph Reed, director of the Christian Coalition and a key leader of the movement, professed himself "absolutely thrilled" by Monday's victory. One is the candidacy-cum-crusade of Pat Buchanan, who in 1996 has made abortion and social issues his centrepiece, rather than the protectionist themes of 1992. The other is the ever-growing power of the religious right, which now controls Republican organisations in several states, including Texas.An illustration of the trend could come as early as today on Mr Dole's home turf of Kansas, with the results of primary elections to pick Republican candidates to run for the state's two US Senate seats, being vacated by himself and Nancy Kassebaum.Sheila Frahm, the pro-choice appointee to replace Mr Dole when he left the Senate in June to concentrate full-time on campaigning, is in particular trouble. The abortion plank was "lop-sided," Mr Weld said, and "neither reflects what the true majority of Republicans believe, nor does a thing to increase our electability".Abortion has long divided Republicans but never so raucously or so bitterly as now - and with such potentially disastrous consequences The reasons are two.

By caving in to his party's social conservatives on abortion, Bob Dole has increased, rather than diminished, the risk that next week's nominating convention in San Diego could be thrown into turmoil by a public floor fight between pro-choice and pro-life Republican delegates. After months of insisting on a special "tolerance" clause in the convention platform's section dealing with abortion, the Dole campaign on Monday bowed to the religious right, which controls swathes of the party apparatus, and settled for an anodyne formulation that talks merely of "deeply held and sometimes differing views" on a range of social issues, without specifying abortion. As in every election since the 1960s therefore, the Republicans will fight the autumn campaign committed to amending the Constitution to guarantee the right to life, excluding abortions even in cases of rape, incest or where the mother's life is in danger, where Mr Dole himself would like exceptions to be made.But hardly had the deal been struck than rebellion by the pro-choice faction began against what it believes is another misstep in a mistake- strewn campaign, which can only alienate the moderate and centrist voters which their candidate must win over to have a chance of capturing the White House.Three of the most prominent Republican governors - William Weld of Massachusetts, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Pete Wilson of California - all pro-choice, announced a drive to assemble the support of six individual state delegations needed to bring a platform issue to the floor when the convention opens on Monday. About a fifth speak no English or Spanish and they often take the lowest-paid jobs.Antonin holds up a check stub for $150 - pay for a six-day week. He describes a home with seven brothers and sisters in a place where wages were three dollars a day. "With the money we have in Mexico, we don't even have enough to buy clothes," he said.. The Mixtecs are said to account for a growing number of migrant workers.