Hejaz Railway - History

History

A railway had been suggested in 1864 to relieve the suffering of the hajis on their 40-day journey through the wilderness of Midian, the Nafud, and the Hejaz Mountains. The railway was started in 1900 at the behest of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II and was built largely by the Ottomans, with German advice and support. A public subscription was opened throughout the Islamic world to fund construction. The railway was to be a waqf, an inalienable religious endowment or charitable trust. Before the construction, German military adviser in Istanbul Auler Pasha estimated that the transportation of soldiers from Istanbul to Mecca would be reduced to 120 hours. The Berlin to Baghdad Railway was built in the same time. The railways were interrelated and aimed to strengthen the authority of the Empire over Arab provinces. Another intention was to protect Hejaz and other Arab provinces from British invasion.

The railway reached Medina on September 1, 1908, the anniversary of the Sultan's accession. Compromises had had to be made in order to finish by this date, with some sections of track being laid on temporary embankments across wadis. In 1913 the Hejaz Railway Station was opened in central Damascus as the starting point of the line.

The Emir Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca viewed the railway as a threat to Arab suzerainty, since it provided the Ottomans with easy access to their garrisons in Hejaz, Asir, and Yemen. 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 line. 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.

During World War I, the German Army produced shale oil from Yarmouk oil shale deposit to fuel locomotives operating on the railway. The line was repeatedly damaged in fighting during the war, particularly at the hands of the guerrilla force led by T. E. Lawrence during the Arab Revolt, which ambushed Ottoman trains. The Turks built a military railway from the Hejaz line to Beersheba, opening on October 30, 1915.

In World War II the Samakh Line from Haifa to Deraa at the Syrian border and to Damascus was run for the Allied forces by the New Zealand Railway Group 17th ROC from Afula, with workshops at Deraa and Haifa. The locomotives were 1914 Borsig and 1917 Hauptman models from Germany and Breda from Italy. The line, previously operated by the Vichy French, was in disrepair. Trains over the steep section between Samakh (now Ma’agan) and Derea were 230 tons maximum, with 1000 tons moved in 24 hours. The Group also ran 60 miles (95 km) of branch line including Afula to Tulkarm

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire the railway did not reopen south of the Jordanian-Saudi Arabian border. An attempt was made in the mid-1960s, but this was abandoned due to the Six Day War in 1967.