At the risk of some repetition I will summarise briefly the principal findings of this study. African railwaymen spend most of their adult working lives away from their rural areas of origin in employment in the cities of East Africa and at EARH depots where they happen to be stationed. As railway employees they belong to a distinct community which has local elements spread throughout the three territories. The social framework of the community, the categories of its culture, are provided in large measure by the industrial framework in that such organisational features as the departmental structure, the grading and salary systems, the industrial hierarchy, the distribution into occupations are taken up and used as a basis for relationships of solidarity and inequality. In this respect the industrial framework provides a specific form and content within the community for the general status system which now exists in East Africa. Status differentiation among railwaymen and an incipient division into classes have been created or at least intensified by recent political developments in which Africans have moved in increasing numbers into the middle and upper echelon positions in the industry and in the wider society.

At the same time most railwaymen are oriented towards social institutions and individuals outside the industry, notably those within their rural homes and hence their ethnic group. Almost all workers have a complex network of extra-town ties which links them socially and economically with their homes and continues to place them in special relationships with their home people.