The old Dodoma railway station is one of the city's few genuinely historic buildings — a low stone structure with a long platform and a deep verandah, dating from the German colonial period when the Central Railway from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma was being built. For decades the station was the most important thing in town: a stop on the line that ran from the Indian Ocean to Lake Tanganyika, and the reason the British later promoted Dodoma to provincial capital.
Passenger trains still run — slowly — on the line. The journey from Dar es Salaam takes 14 to 15 hours, often longer, and arriving at Dodoma after a long night on the rails is a small experience in itself. The station building has been patched and repainted many times but retains its colonial bones.