Later Years
While the members of the royal family wanted heavenly gardens, splendid cars, and concrete palaces, King Abdulaziz wanted a royal railway from the Persian Gulf to Riyadh and then an extension to Jeddah. The shrine was regarded by all of the advisers living in the country as an old man's folly. Eventually, ARAMCO built the railway, at a cost of $70 million, drawn from the King's oil royalties. It was completed in 1951 and was used commercially after the king's death. It enabled Riyadh to grow into a relatively modern city. But when a paved road was built in 1962, the railway lost its traffic.
Read more about this topic: Ibn Saud
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“I was able to believe for years that going to Madame Swann’s was a vague chimera that I would never attain; after having passed a quarter of an hour there, it was the time at which I did not know her which became to me a chimera and vague, as a possible destroyed by another possible.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Three years ago, also, when the Sims tragedy was acted, I said to myself, There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of Massachusetts,—what has he been about the last fortnight? Has he had as much as he could do to keep on the fence during this moral earthquake?... He could at least have resigned himself into fame.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)