Danakil Depression, EthiopiaIf you google Danakil Depression, Ethopia you will find quite a bit of information as to the environment. I did also find the following which I thought was interesting as well. (Dallol, Ethopia - Wikipedia) -
Note mention of railwayDallol is a settlement in northern Ethiopia. Located in Administrative Zone 2 of the Afar Region in the Afar Depression, it has a latitude and longitude of 
14°14'N 40°18'E? / ?14.233°N 40.3°E? / 14.233; 40.3 with an elevation of 50 meters above sea level. The Central Statistical Agency has not published an estimate for this settlement's 2005 population; it has been described as a ghost town.
Dallol currently holds the record high average temperature for an inhabited locationon Earth, where an average annual temperature of 34°C (94°F) wasrecorded between the years 1960 and 1966. Dallol is also one of themost remote places on Earth. There are no roads; the only regulartransport service is provided by camel caravans which travel to the area to collect salt.
A railway from the port of Mersa Fatma in Eritrea to a point 28 km from Dallol was completed in April 1918. Potashproduction is said to have reached about 50,000 metric tons after therailway was constructed. Production was stopped after World War I owingto large-scale supplies from Germany, USA, and USSR. Unsuccessfulattempts to reopen production were made in the period 1920-1941.Between the years 1925-29 an Italian company mined 25,000 tons of sylvite, averaging 70% KCl, which was transported by rail to Mersa Fatma.[1]
The Dallol Co. of Asmara sold a few tons of salt from this site to Indiain 1951-1953. In the 1960s, the Parsons Company of the USA, a miningcompany, conducted a series of geological surveys at Dallol. By 1965,about 10,000 holes had been drilled at 65 locations.[1]
Nearby is the Dallol volcano, which last exploded in 1926.