The Kayes train station is a colonial-era building from the late 19th century and one of the finest surviving examples of French West African railway architecture. The station was a vital node on the Dakar-Niger Railway, the colonial line that connected the Atlantic coast at Dakar to the Niger River — an enormous project that took forty years to complete and cost countless lives.
The railway line between Kayes and Bamako still nominally operates, though service has become increasingly unreliable and slow. The station building itself is worth seeing regardless of whether you travel by train. The colonial infrastructure — station, warehouses, telegraph office — makes Kayes feel like a living archive of French imperial ambition in West Africa. The connection to Dakar through Senegal has been suspended; the line to Bamako is the only functioning route.