Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli railway line

HBT line Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli
Cliff of Rosh HaNikra
Route length:	226 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend Coastal railway main line from Tel Aviv u. formerly Cairo -2.8 Haifa Bat Gallim 0.0 0.0 Haifa Mizrach (East) 1904–1990s, today the Israel Railway Museum Haifa marshalling yard Connection of refinery and power station 2.0 Jezreel Valley Railway , branch line of the Hejaz Railway to Dar'a Connection to Kischonhafen New Jezreel Valley Railway to Beit Sche'an Haifa-Merkazit haMifratz since 2001 5.0 Kishon Connection to Iraq Petroleum Refinery BaZa "N and Deschanim Chemical Plant 5.4 5.5 Kishon repair shop ( PR / RI ) 7.4 Haifa Chutzot haMifratz since 2001 8.0 Haifa Qirjat Chaim since 1937 9.1 Qirjat Motzkin since 1937 17.4 Mischmar Hajam Karmielbahn to Karmiel 19.1 Naʿaman branch to Akko terminus 1913–1915, 1919–1941 Naʿaman British Army siding 20.7 Akko (new) 23.0 Bustan haGalil Atar Jasaf 26.5 Schavei Zion 29.0 Nahariya Darom (South) 29.5 Nahariya 34.5 Betzet railway depot of HBT British Army siding Cliffs of Rosh HaNiqra Border Israel ( Mandate Palestine ) / Lebanon , ( Mandate Lebanon ) 40.0 Naqura border 44.0 Naqura Iskandaruna 55 Mansura 59 Ras al-Ain ar-Rashidiyah 67 Tire 72 Burghliye 76 Bordsch el-Haua matanyet ech Chumai 85 Insariye 89 Sarafand Addussiye Sidings: Zahraniye Refinery 99 Ghaziye 102 Saida according to Ra's en-Nabi Yunes 108 Bardja Jiye Saadiyat 117 Damur Khalde Tahwitet el-Ghadir 129 Hadeth 135 131.5 Beirut -St. Michel 129 Dora 127.6 Amaret Chalhub 124 Djdaide 122 Antelias 119 Dbayeh 117 Nahr al-Kalb 115 Souq Mkayel 110 Dschunie 109 Maʿameltayn 107 Tabardscha 104 Buar 103 Nahr Ibrahim 97 Jbail 94 ʿAmschit 83 Batrun 81 Kubba 76 Hannuch 68 Tschimeterie Schekka tunnel about 1500m 66 Shekka 60 Enfeh 50 El-Qalamun 45 Abu Khalakheh to / from the port 41 Tripoli Railway Damas – Hama et Prolongements to Homs and Istanbul

The Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli (HBT line) connected the cities mentioned from 1942 to 1946 over a total of 229 km and was made in standard gauge .

Framework

The line was an extension of the Haifa – Akko line of the Hejaz Railway from Qirjat Motzkin to the north. Since 1937 there was a three-rail track here , which allowed normal-gauge vehicles to travel . The HBT line closed the gap in the standard-gauge connection between Turkey and Egypt . Until then, all traffic in this connection between Damascus and Haifa had to use the narrow-gauge Hejaz Railway. The reason for the construction was to consolidate the British influence east and north of the Suez Canal during World War II . a. was endangered by French troops in Syria , which had declared in favor of the Vichy regime allied with Germany .

Alignment

Different routes were considered. The northernmost point reached by a standard gauge line from Egypt was Haifa. The southernmost points that could be reached by the standard-gauge Baghdad Railway from Turkey were Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast and Rayak in the mountains of Lebanon. The mountainous topography , which would have required a lot of civil engineering and that a considerable amount of work would have had to be done in hard basalt rock , spoke against the connection to Rayak, which is shorter as the crow flies . Since the British had sea sovereignty anyway, the decision was made in favor of a route along the coast. In some places, however, the railway had to be built so close to the sea that waves crashed against trains when the sea was stormy and the route was washed away several times during the few years of operation. The route is also likely to be the only one that has ever been torpedoed by a submarine (the damage is said to have been minimal).

construction

The line was built from September 1941 by railroad military contingents from the British Commonwealth and civil engineers. The Haifa-Beirut section was built by South African civil engineers, the Beirut-Tripoli section by the Australian military. The tunnels were built by miners from South African gold mines.

The narrow-gauge track from Haifa to Akko was expanded as a three - rail track up to the Naʿaman connection (19 km) and from there the normal-gauge line continued north. In the southern section, Haifa-Beirut, seven larger, eight smaller bridges and 98 culverts were built. In the north, Beirut-Tripoli, nine larger and numerous smaller bridges had to be built. A number of tunnels also had to be built. The construction time was about a year, six months less than originally estimated.

business

The route has been released for operation in sections:

• Tripoli-Cheka on July 22, 1942
• Haifa-Beirut in August 1942
• The entire route on December 22, 1942. An official ceremony took place.

The route was operated by the military and with military vehicles and was used almost exclusively for military traffic. In practice, HBT locomotives and personnel drove passenger trains to Haifa, including the short three-rail section north of Haifa, which belonged to Palestine Railways (PR). For the other trains, the personnel and locomotive change took place in Tel Achsiv (Azzib / az-Zib), today: Betzet , north of Naharija , where the HBT operated a large depot and a marshalling yard. The trains were driven south of Tel Achsiv with PR locomotives and personnel. The other major depots were in Bahsas , south of Tripoli, and furnished in Beirut.

On July 1, 1945, the HBT line between Haifa and Naharija was finally opened to civil traffic with an opening train. However, there was never any civil traffic on the entire route. The British military authorities refused to open up through traffic from Istanbul to Cairo. From 1946 onwards , the Taurus Express ran twice a week with through coaches to Tripoli, and the passengers were then carried on by road to Haifa. In 1948 the through cars to Tripoli are no longer listed. In 1949, the international timetable conference - contrary to all the political upheavals that had taken place in the Middle East (see Palestine War ) - considered the interruption of the route to be provisional.

vehicles

Since around 1943, diesel locomotives also drove the HBT line for the first time . Built by Whitcomb , they developed 650 hp.

For the HBT line, broad gauge passenger cars were imported from the Great Indian Peninsula Railway and reworked on site for standard gauge.

The End

The HBT line was sold north of the later Israeli state border at the end of 1946 from Great Britain for £ 5 million to Lebanon and continued to be operated by the Damas – Hama et Prolongements (DHP) railway. In June of the same year, the British military ceased operations on the HBT line north of Tel Achziv / Betzet. The border crossing to Lebanon should never be used again.

The line, located in Palestine, was integrated into the network of Rakkevet Israel (RI) two years later and today forms the northern branch of the coastal railway of its main north-south connection Nahariya-Beersheba .

The most prominent structural relic of the stretch to the north of Betzet are the tunnels in the cliff of Rosh HaNiqra (Arabic: Raʾs an-Naqura ) protruding into the Mediterranean . The border between Israel and Lebanon runs through one of these .

literature

• Paul Cotterell: The Railways of Palestine and Israel . Tourret Books, Abington 1986, ISBN 0-905-87804-3
• Neil Robinson: World Rail Atlas . Vol. 8: The Middle East and Caucasus . 2006.
• Walter Rothschild : Arthur Kirby and the last years of Palestine Railways: 1945–1948 , Berlin: Selbstverlag, 2009, plus London King's College Diss., 2009.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rothschild, chap. 6, section (B).
2. ↑ Rothschild, chap. 6, section (B).