Hejaz railway

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Image:Damascus-Hejaz station.jpg The 1050mm gauge Hejaz Railway (also Hedjaz, etc.) ran from Damascus to Medina, through the Hejaz region of Arabia. It was part of the Ottoman railways network.

Although justified as a "religious railway" to aid the Hajj pilgrimage, its true purpose was probably to cement the Ottoman grip on the region and foster trade between Damascus and Medina.

The railway was started in 1900 at the behest of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II and was built largely by the Turks, with German advice and support. Another railroad which was under construction at the same time was the Berlin to Baghdad Railway.

The railway is remarkable both for having had no debt when completed and for having many miles of track below sea-level. The initial declared goal of laying the tracks all the way to Mecca was never achieved. In fact it never reached further south than Medina, 400 km (250 miles) short of Mecca.

The railway reached Medina on September 1, 1908, the anniversary of the Sultan's accession. Unfortunately compromises were made to finish by this date, with some sections of track being laid on temporary embankments across wadis. In 1913 a new station, the Hijaz Station, was opened in central Damascus as the starting point of the line (Damascus to Medina is 1300 km (820 miles)).

From its outset, the railway was the target of attacks by local Arab tribes. These were never particularly successful, but neither were the Turks able to control areas more than a mile or so either side of the tracks. Due to the locals' habit of pulling up wooden sleepers to fuel their camp-fires, some sections of the track were laid on iron sleepers.

The line was repeatedly damaged in fighting during the First World War, particularly at the hands of the guerrilla force led by T. E. Lawrence during the Arab Revolt. Following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the railway never re-opened south of the Jordanian-Saudi Arabian border.

An attempt was made to re-open the line in the mid 1960s, but this was abandoned due to the Six Day War in 1967.

Two connected but non-contiguously operated sections of the Hejaz Railway are in service:

from Amman in Jordan to Damascus in Syria, as the "Hedjaz Jordan Railway."
from phosphate mines near Ma'an to the Gulf of Aqaba, as the "Aqaba Railway."

Image:Jordan train.jpg Workers on the railway have restored many of the original locomotives. There are currently nine steam locomotives in Syria and seven in Jordan in working order. Since the accession of King Abdullah, relations between Jordan and Syria have improved, causing a revival of interest in the railway. The train, however, no longer runs from the Hijaz Station but from Qadam station in the outskirts of the Syrian capital. In 2004 the Hejaz Station in Damascus was closed, pending a major commercial development project.

Small non-operating sections of the railway track, buildings and rolling-stock are still preserved as tourist-attractions in Saudi Arabia. Trains destroyed by Lawrence can still be seen where they fell.

In 2005, a Landbridge project was announced to build about 3,000 km of railways, to link mines and ports and towns within Saudi Arabia, and to do part of the work needed to link with adjacent countries. While none of the new lines in the current project cross the border into adjacent states, several lines nearly reach these borders and in directions that head for useful destinations — so perhaps this could see the start of restoration on the Saudi section of the railway?