Haifa – Darʿā railway line

Jezreel Valley Railway Haifa – Dar'a
Route length:	161 km
Gauge :	1050 mm
Maximum slope :	2.0  ‰
Minimum radius :	100 m
States:	Israel , Syria / Jordan
Legend Coastal railway main line  of Beersheba 0.0 Haifa Mizrach (East) 1904–1990s  today Israel's  Railway Museum 1.45  m above sea level. NN Haifa marshalling yard Connection of refinery and power plant (from 1930) 2.0 Coastal railway of the main line to Naharija New Jezreel Valley Railway to Beit Sche'an  1942–1948 also HBT line to Tripoli Kishon Harbor New Jezreel Valley Railway to Beit Sche'an Haifa-Merkazit haMifratz since 2001 4.62 Connection to the Ḥawāssa quarry (حواسة)   1913–1915 to Akko (old) 5.02 Balad al-Schaych / Tel Chanan 1904–1951 New Jezreel Valley Railway from Haifa 6.9 Nescher 1926–1951 7.4 Nescher factory 1922–1951 New Jezreel Valley Railway to Beit Sche'an 10.2 Mescheq Yajur / Jagur 1925–1951 10.35 Nachalat Jaʿaqov  (founded in 1924; today Kfar Chassidim) 12.15 al-Jalamah New Jezreel Valley Railway Kishon 15.0 Elro'i (today to Qirjat Ṭivʿōn ) 17.0 Qirjat Charoschet (today to Qirjat Ṭivʿōn) Kishon New Jezreel Valley Railway from Haifa Jokne'am - Kfar Jehoshuʿa New Jezreel Valley Railway to Beit Sche'an 21.7 Tell al-Schammam / Kfar Jehoschuʿa  1904–1951  39  m above sea level. NN  from 2008 Hejaz Railway Museum 26.7 Kfar Baruch 1926–1951 New Jezreel Valley Railway from Haifa Migdal ha-ʿEmeq - Kfar Baruch from 2016 New Jezreel Valley Railway to Beit Sche'an Samaria Railway from Nablus 36.3 Afula 1904–1951  62.4  m above sea level NN Afula (new) since 2016 New Jezreel Valley Railway from Haifa 45.8 Ejn Charod 1922-1948 48.7 Tel Jossef 1927-1948 51.0 Schatta 1936–1948 78.19  m below sea level 57.0 ha-Sadeh 1937-1948 59.2 Beisan 1904–1948  121.72  m under NN   Beit Sche'an since 2016 61.5 Quarry siding of the   "Public Works Department" 69.9 Beit Jossef 1937-1948 76.5 Jisr al-Majami 1905–1948; lowest station in the world 246.47  m below sea level Jordan ; Border between Mandate Palestine / Israel and Transjordan / Jordan 78.0 Sidings Palestine Electric Co. 79.0 Naharayim 1937-1948 1. Jarmuk bridge; Border of (Trans) Jordan to Mandate Palestine / Israel 81.4 Delhamiya Quarry siding 84.2 ʿEmeq ha-Jarden  from 1937 Chanijat Arlosoroff 86.9 Sammach 1905-1948; since 2015 Land Israel  Study Center   186.88  m below sea level 2. Jarmuk Bridge; Border of Mandate Palestine / Israel to (Trans) Jordan 3. Jarmuk Bridge; Border of (trans) Jordan to Mandate Palestine / Israel 95.3 al-Hamma 1905-1948 146.06  m below sea level 4. Jarmuk Bridge; Border of Mandate Palestine / Israel to (Trans) Jordan 5. Jarmuk Bridge; Border of (trans) Jordan to Mandate Syria / Syria (or the Golan Heights ) 6. Jarmuk Bridge 107.4 Wadi Chalid from 1905; 56.62  m below sea level 7. Jarmuk Bridge 119.5 al-Sedschere / al-Shajara  from 1905; 26.89  m above sea level NN 8. Jarmuk Bridge 124.4 al-Maqarn / Maqarin from 1905; 71.14  m above sea level NN 9. Jarmuk Bridge 10. Jarmuk Bridge 11. Jarmuk Bridge 12. Jarmuk Bridge 135.8 Zayzun from 1905; 260.19  m above sea level NN 13. Jarmuk Bridge 14. Jarmuk Bridge 15. Jarmuk Bridge 149.1 Muzayrib from 1901; 461.6  m above sea level NN Hejaz Railway to Damascus from 1903 (see above) Dar'a from 1901; 461.6  m above sea level NN Hejaz Railway to Medina

Reception building Haifa Mizrach (east): terminus on the Mediterranean Sea

Hejaz Railway Museum in the former Tell esch Schamas / Kfar Jehoschuʿa station

Sammach station, since 2015 study center on the campus of the Kinneret University, 2016

A train leaves the top of the Jarmuk Gorge

The Haifa – Darʿā or Jezreel Valley Railway ( Hebrew רַכֶּבֶת עֵמֶק יִזְרְעֶאל Rakkevet ʿEmeq Jizreʿ'el , German , Jezreeltalbahn , or shortרַכֶּבֶת הָעֵמֶק Rakkevet ha-ʿEmeq , German for 'path of the valley' ; English Jezreel Valley Line ) was a narrow-gauge line in the gauge of 1050 mm, which belonged to the system of the Hejaz Railway . It ran from the port city of Haifa to the Darʿā station in Hauran on the main route of the Hejaz Railway from Damascus to Medina . It was the line that reached the lowest point of all railway lines in the world at 258 m below sea level .

prehistory

The long -established Beirut family Sursuq made a first attempt to establish the Haifa - Damascus connection in standard gauge in 1882 . She received a concession for the Akko - Damascus route. Since she was unable to raise the necessary capital, the concession expired .

The concession was then given to Jusuf Effendi Eljas in 1889 and again in 1891, together with the British Robert Pilling . They sold them to the Syrian Ottoman Railway Company , behind which the British entrepreneur Hill stood with his Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding and Engineering . Construction began in 1892.

Underfunded, the company could not get beyond the earthworks for the first eight kilometers, so that the state withdrew the concession in 1895 and transferred it to a British company. They succeeded in building the first eight kilometers ready for operation by 1899 and completing the superstructure up to kilometer 23. Between kilometers 30 and 35 and kilometers 45 and 50, the earthworks in the next construction lots were in progress.

The construction progress was very hesitant, which is why the government bought back the concession in 1902 and converted the project to the gauge of 1,050 mm in order to ensure the connection to the technical parameters of the Hejaz Railway. The work was in the hands of Heinrich August Meißner , "Meißner Pascha", and began on April 11, 1903.

purpose

There were several reasons to build this expensive and technically demanding railway: it enabled the Ottoman Empire to strengthen its military presence in the border area to the British-ruled Sultanate of Egypt . In addition, construction material for the main stretch of the Hejaz Railway via the sea from Haifa, as the closest Mediterranean port to be reached, could be delivered to their construction sites on the route.

The railway also opened up the agriculturally productive regions of the Hauran Plain, Jordan Valley and Jezreel Plain. The Ottoman government promised an economic revitalization of Damascus , which was in a persistent economic depression after the newly opened Suez Canal attracted traffic in the Middle East.

And finally, the railway from Damascus to Beirut , built by a French company, Chemin de Fer Damas - Hama et Prolongement (DHP) and opened in 1895, was on the one hand in foreign ownership and on the other hand had to overcome the Lebanon Mountains, which was very laborious with rack sections and switchbacks and was therefore not very efficient.

These political and strategic guidelines demanded the greatest possible acceleration of the project with only limited funds available. The construction management therefore endeavored to adapt the route to the terrain as much as possible and to refrain from engineering structures and large earth movements.

topography

The route ran over 161 km from Haifa to Dar'a, where it joined the main line 123 km south of Damascus. To do this, the Jordan Valley , the northern end of the East African rift system , had to be crossed and the accompanying marginal mountains overcome - a considerable technical challenge. The route led from the Jezreel valley down to below sea ​​level and reached the lowest point on the Jordan Bridge near the Dschisr el-Madschami ' (today: Gescher Naharajim ) station , which is 247 m below sea level , on which a railway has ever been above ground in the world wrong. From there it led back up to the Sea of ​​Galilee ( 209 m below sea level ) and then over a series of spectacular viaducts through the Gorge of the Yarmuk up to Syria. In total, the railway had 141 bridges, 392 water passages and eight tunnels with a total length of 1,100 m. Despite the difficult topography, an adhesion path was created that maintains a maximum gradient of 20 per thousand and a minimum radius of 125 m. The greatest difficulty was the ascent in the Jarmuktal, where the difference in altitude between the Sea of ​​Galilee (−187 m at the Samach station , km 87) and the Muzayrib station (462 m above sea level, km 149) of 649 meters over a length of only 62 km has to be overcome.

business

Operations up to the Jordan Bridge (km 77) began in the course of 1904, the track was made navigable for the further 84 km to Dar'a on October 15 of the same year, and scheduled operations began in 1906. The connection to the port of Haifa played a prominent role in the overall system of the Hejaz Railway. The route prospered economically, with a number of factors adversely affecting its economy:

• light rails of only 21.5 kg / m weight, which only allowed a low axle load of 10 t.
• there was initially a lack of workshops for the vehicles. Only at the repeated urging of the operations and construction management was a larger workshop built on the Kishon (also: Qishon); Until its completion date in July 1908, the company had to make do with three small workshops that were attached to the locomotive shed.
• the staff were all recruited from the local population and were poorly trained.

additions

After the railway had proven to be an economic success,

• extended the Ottoman state 1911-1913 the line to the Haifa-Akko and railway line
• 1912–1914 the Afula – Nablus Samaria Railway was built.
• During the First World War , the Jezreel Valley Railway was the starting point for a railway system that the Ottoman army used to attack the British on the Suez Canal and in the Sultanate of Egypt and that was driven south from Afula - out of range of the British Navy. These routes were given up when the armies of the Central Powers withdrew and their routes were taken by the advancing British and partly re-gauged into their standard-gauge railways.

Between the world wars

Infrastructure

In the course of the First World War, the British military railways , starting from the Sinai Railway , drove a standard-gauge line to Lod . From there they tracked the captured Maspūdiyya – Sinai narrow-gauge railway of the Ottoman Military Railway to Tulkarm on standard gauge and extended it to Haifa via Hadera until November 1920. The Jezreel Valley Railway continued to operate as a narrow-gauge railway. Due to the changed political conditions, the route ran partly in the mandate of Palestine , which was under British sovereignty, and the French- administered Syrian mandate .

The border station between the two administrations was the Palestinian El Hama , while the locomotive exchange station was in Sammach on the Sea of ​​Galilee . Renovated from 2010 to 2015, Zemach train station is now the center for Land Israel Studies (לִמּוּדֵי אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל) of the Kinneret Academic University in the Jordan Valley (הַמִּכְלָלָה הָאֲקָדֶמִית כִּנֶּרֶת בְּעֵמֶק הַיָּרְדֵּן ha-Michlalah ha-Aqademīt Kinneret bə-ʿEmeq ha-Jarden ). The part of the Jezreel Railway in Palestine operated by Palestine Railways (PR), the part in Syria traded as Chemin de Fer Hijaz (CFH), with the operation of the Damas – Hama et Prolongements (DHP) railway being transferred.

business

In the interwar period there were only three pairs of trains per week - before the First World War the train ran daily. When Great Britain took over the mandate in Palestine, its traffic relations shifted towards Egypt. The passenger train from Haifa to Damascus was the direct connection to the night train coming from El Qantara (Egypt). The ride comfort on the Hejaz Railway was minimal. Sleeping or dining cars did not exist. Only when the saloon car was rented was it possible to serve pre-cooked food for its passengers.

World War II and the end

At the beginning of the Second World War , British units and the French military, who sympathized with the Vichy regime , faced each other on the Palestinian-Syrian border : After the occupation of France, Germany recognized the Hitler-friendly government of Marshal Pétain and left the colonial forces against the condition that German troops may use the railways in the French protectorate of Tunisia and Mandate Syria to deploy against the Suez Canal. This and a Hitler-friendly coup in Iraq pushed British troops into Damascus, a company whose logistics were largely carried out via the Jezreel Valley Railway. In 1942 the standard-gauge Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli (HBT line) was opened along the Mediterranean coast , which largely took over the logistical function of the Jezreel Valley Railway as a connection between Syria and Egypt, as it was topographically much less problematic and there was no reloading of goods in the lane changing stations .

The Jezreel Valley Railway was interrupted by Jewish underground fighters during the civil war in Palestine in the late 1940s, shortly before Israel's independence , in order to cut off a supply route for the British mandate. The remainder of the route to Samach that remained in Israel after independence and the division of Palestine was continued to be operated by Rakkevet Israel , but was no longer serviced regularly and was shut down in 1951, meanwhile re-established in standard gauge in 2016 ( see below ). The part that remained in Syria, which had become independent in 1946, was also continued to operate, but ultimately had no more scheduled traffic. There were still special trips. This operation also ended with the civil war in Syria .

vehicles

With regard to the vehicles used, see the corresponding section in the article Hejaz Railway .

New construction

Since 2015, the line through the Rakkevet Israel in the section located in Israel in standard gauge to Bet She'an has been rebuilt as the New Jezreel Valley Railway and opened on October 16, 2016.

useful information

Monument to the Hejaz Railway in front of the Israel Railway Museum in Haifa

The Israeli Railway Museum in Haifa has numerous exhibits on this route. In the old Kfar Jehoschuʿa / Tell esh Schamas station, which was renovated from 2005, a museum of the Jezreel Valley Railway opened after its completion in 2008.

literature

• Karl Auler-Pascha: Hejaz Railway . Gotha 1906
• Benno Bickel: Full steam ahead through the desert. Locomotive and operating history of the Hedjazbahn and Bagdadbahn , in: Jürgen Franzke (Ed.): Bagdadbahn and Hedjazbahn. German Railway History in the Middle East , Nuremberg 2003, ISBN 3-921590-05-1 , pp. 139–143.
• Paul Cotterell: The Railways of Palestine and Israel . Tourret Books, Abington 1986, ISBN 0-905878-04-3
• Jürgen Franzke (Ed.): Baghdad and Hedjaz Railway. German railway history in the Middle East . W. Tümmels, Nuremberg 2003, ISBN 3-921590-05-1
• Peter Heigl: "Up to track head 17.6 gravel is driven hard and the tracks are tamped and straightened for the second time". German civil engineers during construction work on the Hejaz and Bagdad Railway , in: Jürgen Franzke (Ed.): Bagdad Railway and Hedjaz Railway. German Railway History in the Middle East , Nuremberg 2003. ISBN 3-921590-05-1 , pp. 112–119.
• Uwe Pfullmann: The Bagdad and Hedjaz Railway in the First World War 1914-1918 , in: Jürgen Franzke (Ed.): Bagdad and Hedjaz Railway. German railway history in the Middle East . Nuremberg 2003, ISBN 3-921590-05-1 , pp. 125-138.

Web links

Commons : Hejaz Railway  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Gerhard Henrich: Forgotten railway with a great past: The Hejaz Railway. A photo safari on the southern part from Kalaat Amara to Medina . updated on October 21, 2010 (> 500 photos)
• Photos and information about the Hejaz Railway, then and now
• Josef Pospichal: Locomotive statistics: Hejaz Railway. Hijaz Railway

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the difficulties in building cf. Heigl