Hejaz Railway

Damascus-Amman-Medina
Route length:	1320 km
Gauge :	1050 mm
Maximum slope :	1.8  ‰
Minimum radius :	100 m
States:	Syria , Jordan , Saudi Arabia
Legend -6.0 Damascus Kanawat extension from 1906 0.0 Damascus-Cadem depot Damascus-Kadem– Aleppo ( standard gauge ) to Qatara 20.8 Kiswe 30.5 The Ali 49.7 Mismije 62.6 Jabab 69.1 Chabab 77.8 Mahadsha 84.6 Shakra 91.2 Izra ' former 600 mm train to As Sawayda 106.1 Chibret al Ghasali Haifa – Darʿā railway line 123.0 Dar'a Ghares 128.6 Branch line to Bosra (see below) 135.7 Nassib Amman – Damascus motorway Syria / Jordan border 140.1 Jabir 161.7 Mafraq 185.3 Chirbet as Samra Amman – Damascus motorway 194.0 Salis IPC refinery 202.7 Az Zarqa Rossaifa Street Rossaifa 222.4 Amman Railway Museum Jesin Viaduct 234.0 Qasr gallery Amman Ring Road 248.8 Lubin Amman Road – Amman Airport 259.7 Dshisa 278.7 Daba'a 295.2 Chan us Zibib 309.3 Suaka 326.2 Qatrana track triangle 348.4 Menzil crossing Abiad phosphate mine M 45 367.1 Faraifa Wadi el Hassa phosphate mine 377.8 Al Hassa M 45 397.4 Dschiruf ed Derwish M 45 422.7 Anese according to Hischech 440.5 Wadu Jardum junction 458.8 Maʿan after Naqb Ashtar 475.0 Gadir al Hadsh 487.0 Shedija crossing 491.0 Abu Tarafa 500.0 Esch-Schifia 508.0 Fassua 514.2 Aqaba el Hedschasije (Hattyia) 519.7 Batn al Ghul 522.5 to Aqaba 530.0 Wadi Rassim 545.0 Tel el Sham 572.0 Mudawarra Jordan / Saudi Arabia state border 583.0 crossing 591.0 Kalaat Amara 598.0 crossing 610.0 Sat ul Hajj 622.0 crossing 635.0 Bir Hermas 654.0 El Hazim 667.0 Makhtab 681.0 crossing 692.0 Taboo 706.0 crossing 710.0 Wadi Atil 716.0 crossing 737.0 Sahr ul Ghoul 743.0 Dar ul Hadsh 753.0 Mustabka 757.0 Al Achdar 773.0 Chamis 794.4 Dissaid 830.0 Al Muadhem / Muassam 844.0 crossing 855.0 Khism Sana'a / Hachim Sana 871.0 crossing 883.0 Al Muteli 885.0 Dar al Hamra 904.0 Mutali 912.0 Abu Taka 924.0 crossing 938.0 Al Muzhim 946.0 Mabrakat al Naka 958.0 Meda'in Saleh Bw , Railway Museum 973.0 crossing 983.0 Al Ula 994.0 crossing 1003.0 Bedai crossing 1013.0 Meshed intersection 1025.0 crossing 1029.0 Sahil Matara crossing 1048.0 Zumrud / Sumruk 1060.0 crossing 1079.0 Bir Jehid 1099.0 Tuwaira crossing 1115.0 Waiban crossing 1126.0 Muderitsh crossing 1144.0 Hedia 1166.3 Djeda 1176.0 Abu al Na'am 1194.5 Stabl Antar 1215.0 Al Buwayr crossing 1228.0 crossing 1245.0 Bir Nassif 1273.0 Hafire crossing 1290.5 Bir Abu Jabir / Muhid 1303.0 Buwata intersection 1309.0 Hafirah 1315.5 Bir Osman 1320.5 Medina 1322, 0 Medina Citadel

The Hejaz Railway (HR) ( Arabic سكة حديد الحجاز, DMG Sikkat ḥadīd al-Ḥiǧāz ) is a railway company in the Middle East.

• It led from Damascus in Syria to Medina in what is now Saudi Arabia .
• Hejaz Railway is also the name for the network that was built in addition to this 1322 km long main line and reached a maximum extension of 1585 km. Today only the northern section of the main line and some branch lines in Syria and Jordan are still operational, but there is only a small amount of scheduled traffic here.
• Hejazbahn is also the name for the company that operated and operates this system.

Technical

The Hejaz Railway - also known as the Mekka Railway, the Sacred Railway or the Desert Railway - is, like the Baghdad Railway , a pioneering technical achievement. The Hejaz Railway was built in its northern part, now in Syria and Jordan , by local construction companies, and further south by up to 7,000 soldiers of the Ottoman armed forces .

The main line is to have 1,532 bridges, two tunnels and 96 operating points, some of which are also train stations. The reception building are partly architecturally appealing.

After the destruction that began with the First World War - this is where Lawrence of Arabia made his name - the Hejaz Railway is only partially passable, ultimately because of the disagreement between the colonial powers and then the Arab successor states.

legal form

The Hejaz Railway was initially a state institution. In 1914 it was placed under the Turkish Ministry of Religious Foundations. It is assumed that since then it has had the legal form of a waqf , an indissoluble religious foundation committed to the common good . As a foundation, it should become inalienable, especially against foreign claims; that part of the construction costs were financed by donations only played a subordinate role. In later times it was controversial which parts of the system belonged to the Waqf and which did not. For the sections that still exist today, the legal form of the Waqf is now assumed. Legally, the Hejaz Railway has always survived, even if it has lost most of its route network since the time of its maximum expansion of 1585 km at the beginning of the First World War.

administration

The management of the Hejaz Railway was originally in Haifa . After the fall of the Ottoman Empire , from 1920 onwards it was subordinated to different administrations for the respective network in the subsequent territories.

The staff was mainly recruited from the surrounding tribal areas, also to integrate and calm down the tribes from which the new railway took some of their previous income from protection money and transport services. That was only possible to a limited extent.

In 1911 the railway set up a pension fund - probably the first organization in the Ottoman Empire . According to the standards of the time, it also offered a considerable amount of social benefits, such as company housing.

Main route Damascus – Medina

The route runs from Damascus via Dar'a and Amman in Jordan to Medina. A branch line branched off from Dar'a in Syria to Haifa in present-day Israel and was continued to the Sinai Peninsula during the First World War . Further branches followed later.

planning

The railway was politically important for the Ottoman Empire. All the other railway lines in the empire had emerged as concession routes for foreign companies that operated them and brought little benefit to the country itself. The reasons for the award of the concession were the economic weakness of the empire and the lack of its own specialist staff. With the project of the Hejaz Railway, Caliph-Sultan Abdülhamid II wanted to prove that the Ottoman Empire was able to carry out such an extensive project on its own.

The destination Mecca should also underline the role of the caliph as the leader of all Muslims worldwide. This would also enable religiously motivated donations to be acquired for railway construction throughout the Islamic world.

Strategically, the railway would better develop the Arab border areas and improve control over them, which was directed primarily against the British presence on the Suez Canal and the Red Sea . However, the planned branch line to Aqaba failed because of the veto of Great Britain, which even had its Mediterranean fleet deployed in front of the Dardanelles and Istanbul in a military threatening gesture in May 1906 , because the branch line to Aqaba would have made it possible to bypass the Suez Canal.

financing

The cost was 4 million  gold pounds (lira) . That was 15% of the Ottoman Empire's budget for 1909.

The main route was supposed to reach Mecca, but was only realized as far as Medina. Since it would make the pilgrims' journey to Mecca ( Hajj ) much easier, Muslims from all over the world donated around 28% of the building costs; however, the main share of about 72% was contested by the Ottoman Empire .

construction

Heinrich August Meißner Pascha (1862-1940), a German engineer who had worked for railways in the Ottoman Empire since 1887, was entrusted with the management of the project . For him spoke that the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire moved closer together during this time; Candidates for the post of chief engineer who were subjects of other great powers, against whose interests in the Arab region the project was directed, were eliminated anyway. Meißner also hired other German engineers for the construction and operation of the railway, for example the later director of the Reichsbahn , Paul Levy , was responsible for the construction, procurement and repair of the rolling stock as well as the necessary railway depot and the establishment of the workshop from 1905 to 1909 responsible in Damascus.

Completed and under construction route 1909/10

Workers building the Hejaz Railway

The track was laid out in the rare gauge of 1,050 mm. The most likely explanation for this is that the gauge of the existing Damas – Hama et Prolongements (DHP) railway between Beirut and Damascus was used as a guide. Why this gauge was chosen there ultimately remained unclear. The Ottoman state negotiated the acquisition with the operators, but this failed. Rolling stock for the new construction of the Hejaz Railway could nonetheless easily be transported to Damascus on this line, a logistical advantage that should not be underestimated due to the lack of roads.

Construction of the line began in 1900 and was completed in a record time of just eight years despite enormous difficulties caused by heat, sandstorms and lack of water. The Hejaz Railway was opened on September 1, 1908, the Dar'a – Amman and Damascus – Dar'a sections on September 1, 1902 and September 1, 1903, the branch line from Haifa to Darʿā on October 15, 1905.

The construction of the line to Mecca did not take place, although material was already available. He encountered continued resistance from local tribes and interests, who feared for their influence and did not want to forego their income from pilgrims' protection payments and commercial transport. When, after the fall of Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1909, the political pressure to continue building subsided, construction of the last section of the Hejaz Railway to Mecca came to a standstill.

The route of the railway ran in the immediate vicinity of the ruins of the medieval palace complex of Mschatta , a former Umayyad desert castle in present-day Jordan, about 30 km south of Amman. Because it was feared that with the construction of the railway in the immediate vicinity of the ruin valuable components could be stolen from the cultural monument , the facade of Sultan Abdülhamid II was given away to Kaiser Wilhelm II for dismantling , mediated by the Arabia researcher Julius Euting . The Hejaz Railway then enabled the facade to be removed without any problems. It ended up in various Berlin museums one after the other and can now be viewed in the Museum of Islamic Art in the Pergamon Museum .

business

Damascus-Kanawat station - formerly the northern terminus of the Hejaz Railway

Mafraq Railway Station, Jordan

Five trains ran daily during the pilgrimage. At a maximum speed of 30 kilometers per hour, they covered the distance in just three days - it took a camel caravan around a month and a half to do this.

Branch lines

Starting from the main Damascus – Medina route, a number of routes were added to form a network. This reached its greatest extent in 1917 and was structured as follows:

• Damascus – Medina Railway (1908)
  • Damascus – Qatara railway line (1944)
  • Jezreel Valley Railway Haifa – Darʿā (1905 - then switched to standard gauge in 2016 )
    • Samaria Railway Afula – Nablus (1914)
      • Military railway Maṣʿūdiyya – Be'er Scheva (1915–1917 - then switched from Tulkarm south to standard gauge; Eastern Railway )
        • J&J line Jaffa – Jerusalem from Lod to Jerusalem (1915–1918 - then completely shifted to standard gauge)
        • Military railway Tine-El Huj / Beit Hanun (only 1917)
    • Haifa – Akko railway line (new 1913–1915–1919, then completely switched to standard gauge in 1941)
  • Dar'a – Bosra railway line (1912–1914, 1924)
  • Qal'at 'Anaza-el-Hische (ca.1915–1918)
  • Ma'an – Naqb Ashtar railway line (1940–43, -?)
  • Aqaba Railway Aqaba – Abiad / Wadi el Hassa (1975)

First World War

stretch

The Hejaz Railway remained a short dream. Regular operation only lasted seven years.

The First World War marked the first radical turning point for the railways in the Middle East. First, the French private railways were confiscated by the Ottoman Empire, including the meter-gauge Jaffa – Jerusalem railway , and their operations were transferred to the Hejaz Railway. This in turn was placed under the command of the army, which drove the expansion of the railway in Palestine towards the Suez Canal .

See : Ottoman Military Railroad in Palestine .

The great military importance of the Hejaz Railway was its undoing in the First World War, when it became the preferred target of attacks. Insurgent Bedouins led by Thomas Edward Lawrence , better known as Lawrence of Arabia , carried out explosive attacks on the strategically important route several times . These took on such proportions that a German Fliegerstaffel of the Levante Corps had to be deployed to fight the covertly operating Bedouin groups . Rusted wrecks of locomotives along the route still herald the Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire.

business

The biggest problem was supplying the locomotives with fuel. Coal deposits existed only in Lebanon, albeit in poor quality and only in small quantities. Because of the British naval blockade, it could no longer be brought by sea. The annual wood requirement for the company was 150,000 t. As early as 1916, all the trees that could be reached along the railway lines were burned, and many of the old olive groves were cut down. The entire interior of all the J & J's wagons was also burned, presumably when as many locomotives as possible were to be evacuated northwards as the British advanced. In order to obtain wood, men were exempted from military service in order to make use of trees that were far away. Therefore, additional routes were created in the hinterland to get wood supplies:

• Qal'at 'Anaza - el-Hische in southern Transjordan near Petra (28 km),
• el-Qasr-el-Hermil in Lebanon (19 km); a cable car was operated there under the direction of a German officer.

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  Damascus-Kadam depot

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  Damascus-Kadam depot

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  Amman Railway Station

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  Amman Railway Station

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  Special steam train of the Hejaz Railway

Despite all efforts to establish a continuous rail connection from Istanbul, it was not completed until 1918, shortly before the end of the war, and thus had no influence on the outcome of the fighting. Only about 100 wagons with German coal reached the Hejaz Railway before the collapse in 1918.

Over time, lubricants also became scarce. Therefore, they resorted to residues from olive oil production and castor plantations were created under the direction of the railway administration. These operating conditions led to considerable wear and tear on the locomotives as early as 1914/15.

In 1917/18 two German railway company (EBSK) were used on the Hejaz Railway:

• EBSK 11 under Captain Borck and
• EBSK 44/48 under Captain Pösentrup .

The companies consisted of German railway officials. EBSK 11 managed the entire operation between Samach and Tulkarem and provided the dispatchers.

Term of office

Armored train escort from the time of the French mandate

Pass through Az Zarqa

Water reservoir and train station in Az Zarqa, Jordan

The First World War ended for the Middle East with a territorial division into League of Nations mandates : France received Lebanon and Syria , Great Britain Palestine , which at that time also included Transjordan , today's Jordan, and Iraq. Accordingly, the routes on the new border were divided and now subordinated to separate administrations. The Palestine Railways took over the eastern and southern parts of the Hejaz Railway network belonging to Palestine. It operated the Hejaz Railway to the El Hama station (192 km) and the section of the Hejaz Railway that lay between Nasib and Maʿan in Transjordan (436 km). In Syria, the Chemin de Fer Hijaz (CFH) was established in between . Three conferences in Beirut distributed the legacies of the Hejaz Railway, especially the vehicles: 50% each went to the Syrian and the Palestinian / Transjordan successor administration.

In 1924 a train ran the entire route between Damascus and Medina for the last time.

New track construction

In accordance with the new political balance of power, the Hejaz Railway lines on the new border between the areas of the British League of Nations for Palestine and the French League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon were divided and each subordinated to its own administration. The Palestine Railways took over the eastern part of the Hejaz Railway network belonging to Palestine and the section of the Hejaz Railway that was now in Transjordan - later Jordan. It operated the Hejaz Railway from Haifa to the El Hama station (192 km) and between Nasib and Maʿan (436 km). The only repair shop for the two British sections was near Haifa.

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  Typical passage on the route

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  Special steam train in Faraifa station. Locomotive 82, built in 1959 in Japan

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  Ruins of the military fortress for the Anese train station

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  Anese station - on the part of the Hejaz Railway used by the Phosphate Railway

business

The maximum speed allowed on the Hejaz Railway was usually 30 km / h before the mandate and was later increased somewhat on sections of the route.

Second World War

stretch

New Zealand pioneers overhauled the facilities on the Tulkarem to Afula line in 1940 in order to strengthen the supply route for British troops who were facing French troops in Syria from the French Vichy regime, allied with Hitler . They also repaired one of the bridges in the Yarmuk Gorge that the French had blown up.

In addition, work began on the Ma'an – Aqaba railway , a project that was not completed.

business

At the beginning of 1942 the Hejaz Railway was converted to oil firing because coal was hardly available as a fuel, which led to considerable difficulties at the beginning, especially to numerous machine breakdowns. The damage from enemy action, on the other hand, was minimal.

In 1944, goods traffic on the branch line to Nablus was resumed, but stopped again in 1946 due to a lack of demand. Traffic on the Hejaz Railway network in Palestine was reduced to such an extent in 1945 that any further cancellation would have tied the operation. From July 1, 1946, a provisional timetable for the Haifa East – Samach section was received, which provided for a freight train with passenger transport and the shuttle journey of a Sentinel railcar every day.

In 1955, an Arab committee in cooperation with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia decided to put the Hejaz Railway back into operation over a distance of 843.2 km. In June, the Munich engineering office Kurt Becker GmbH was entrusted with the execution, the President of the Construction Committee was the Syrian President Halabi. However, only about 70 km south of the Jordanian / Saudi Arabian border were expanded. After the Six Day War in 1967 this project was not pursued any further.

Israel

Headquarters of the Jordanian Hejaz Railway in Amman Station

Sign on a vehicle for the tourist company Aqaba - Wadi Rum

The Hejaz Railway lines in Palestine, especially the Jezreel Valley Railway , were interrupted by Israelis during the Palestine War in the late 1940s in order to cut off a supply route for the British Mandate in Palestine . The remnants of the line that remained in Israel after the partition of Palestine were closed in 1951. In the course of the massive rail expansion of the Israeli network, the new Jezreel Valley Railway started operating in standard gauge in 2016 without level crossings as far as possible following the old route .

Jordan

The Aqaba Railway , which went into operation in 1975, was to be implemented as part of the construction of the main line at the beginning of the 20th century, but failed at the time due to the veto of Great Britain. The phosphate removal operated there uses a section of the main route of the Hejaz Railway.

Syria

In 1976 a 33.9 km long line was laid from Damascus-Cadem to Qatana and the nearby military base.

vehicles

Today, in addition to diesel locomotives , steam locomotives still operate on the Hejaz Railway from the time it was built, including vehicles from the German companies Sächsische Maschinenfabrik , August Borsig and the Arnold Jung Lokomotivfabrik .

Locomotives

The operating conditions required locomotives that were as simple and robust as possible, with generously dimensioned boilers and large storage tanks for coal and water. Because of the inadequate workshop facilities, it would have made sense to create uniform basic shapes or at least to stipulate the uniformity of those parts that were particularly subject to wear and tear. However, the General Commission of the Hejaz Railway in distant Istanbul, which was presided over by the Grand Vizier , largely ignored the management's advice. Such suggestions were only taken into account in subsequent purchases.

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  Mallet locomotive, parked in the Damascus-Kadam depot

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  Locomotive of the Saxon machine works

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  Amman depot

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  Steam locomotive with water car on the journey through the desert

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  Locomotive No. 10 in the Israel Railway Museum, Haifa

The first locomotives were ordered in three batches by the General Commission of the Hejaz Railway responsible for procurement:

• First, three C tank locomotives were procured. They were made in Belgium in 1901 by Ateliers de construction de La Meuse SA . They soon proved unsuitable for train service because of the weak boiler and low water supply, which is why they were later only used in shunting service.
• The next order in autumn 1902 was for a three-axle design: six locomotives from Krauss & Co. in Munich, with more powerful boilers and a higher volume for the water supply. After an extremely short construction period of only 42 days, the first was delivered in Beirut, the last in the following year.
• The last three locomotives were specially designed for the construction of the Haifa Railway. However, the machines could not be sent out on the route without a water truck being added, which reduced the usable train weight. Since the railway had no special wagons for this, flat wagons were used, on each of which stood two cube-shaped containers, each with a capacity of 8 m³.

For this reason, a 1'D locomotive with a 12 m³ tender was chosen for the next batch, of which Krauss delivered eight machines in Munich in 1903. In 1904 and 1905, Krauss & Co. built a further batch of six machines from this three-axle tank locomotive. The machine stock was also increased by four tank locomotives with three coupled axles, which were mainly ordered for the construction of the Haifa – Dar'a line and delivered in 1905 by the Hohenzollern Lokomotivbauanstalt in Düsseldorf.

The increasing length of the route served made it necessary to purchase additional locomotives. The management initially asked for a further six locomotives for the passenger traffic that has since commenced on the Damascus-Haifa and Damascus-Ma'an routes, as well as 19 heavy Krauss-type freight locomotives. At the same time, it left the General Commission to order compound locomotives with two engines for use as freight locomotives on the steep inclines in the Yarmuktal and in the area of ​​the Ammonite Mountains (today Syria). This would avoid splitting all trains on the inclines. The proposal was accepted, seven of the composite locomotives were ordered, the number of passenger locomotives increased from six to fourteen for reasons unknown. The following were ordered:

• 14 1'C locomotives with tenders, half of them at Jung in Jungenthal near Kirchen an der Sieg, the others at Sächsische Maschinenfabrik, formerly Richard Hartmann in Chemnitz;
• 7 1'D locomotives with tender at the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik; According to the conditions of the tender, they should be able to transport trains weighing at least 200 t at 10 km / h on a 20 ‰ gradient and negotiate bends with a minimum radius of 90 m.
• 4 (1'B) C mallet locomotives with tender at Henschel & Sohn in Cassel . However, the management refrained from further procurements, since the relatively complicated articulated locomotives made too high demands on the workshops and the training of the staff, which was lacking.

The locomotives were all built and delivered in 1906 and 1907. Their design and equipment corresponded to the regulations of the German railways. The driver's cab was very spacious, had folding seats and had a shade roof and side shutters to protect against the sun.

But more locomotives were required: The Jung Lokomotivfabrik took over the production of twelve 1'D machines with short delivery times. The condition was that the machines should be as similar as possible to those from Krauss and that certain components - axle and rod bearings, control parts, boiler and boiler parts - should be interchangeable between the machines. The Jung locomotives then differed from those of the Krauss type mainly in the arrangement of the axles.

To designate their locomotives, the Hejaz Railway used company numbers without any special series designation. There have been three different numbering plans over the years.

Passenger cars

The Hejaz Railway had 23 "older" four-axle 3rd class wagons with 48 seats each, which were primarily procured for the transport of soldiers and workers before regular passenger traffic began.

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  Passenger car in the Damascus-Kadam depot

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  2nd class car of the Syrian Hejaz Railway

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  3rd class car of the Syrian Hejaz Railway

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  Syrian Hejaz Railway wagon

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  Upholstery class of the Syrian Hejaz Railway

The Nürnberg Maschinenbauanstalt supplied further cars : two first and four second class cars went into operation at the beginning of 1906. The cars were equipped with side aisles, two end stages and an oriental-style toilet with a folding washbasin in the middle of the car. The rest of the equipment was based on the Prussian-Hessian express train cars of the time. In 1st class there were 18 seats in 4 ½ compartments and in 2nd class there were 36 seats in six compartments. The chassis was largely made of oak and the body was made entirely of oak. The outside was clad in teak. Because of the popularity that the carriages had found, a year later, 16 carriages of a similar design were reordered, namely six 1st class, nine 3rd class and one open seating car ("Saalwagen"). The wagons of the new delivery were three meters longer than the first, so that in 1st class 6.5 compartments with 39 seats and in 3rd class 6.5 compartments with 60 seats, including a closed compartment for women (" Haremlik ”), could be accommodated. As an improvement over the first delivery of wagons, these wagons were not provided with a ventilation structure, but with a high-arched roof with a shade roof. Because of the vermin, the 1st class seats were no longer given plush covers, but leather ones. The toilets were relocated to the ends of the car, and the large, undivided windows in 1st class were now divided because of cheaper spare parts storage. The "hall carriage" with its large windows was intended mainly as a viewing car for company trips and had a single large room that was divided in the middle by an open stiffening wall.

The Wagenbauanstalt Werdau in Saxony delivered the fifteen two-axle baggage vehicles in April 1907. They had free steering axles and also a shade roof. They were also equipped with a handbrake that could be operated from the driver's compartment and lines for connecting the Hardy air suction brake, including a pressure gauge and ventilation valve.

There were also three special cars built by the naval workshops in Istanbul as gifts for the Hejaz Railway, including a sleeping car and a mosque car.

Freight wagons

The original freight wagon fleet comprised 595 wagons, all of which had been supplied by Belgian factories, and consisted of the following:

• 375 low side cars with a load weight of 15 t and with fixed front and fold-down side walls 35 cm high;
• 15 wagons of the same type with a loading weight of 25 t;
• 29 high-sided gondolas with a loading weight of 15 t with 1.2 m high, solid front and side walls and a double-leaf revolving door on each long side;
• 75 open wagons of the same type with a loading weight of 25 t;
• 95 boxcars with a load weight of 15 t;
• 6 cattle wagons with 10 t payload;
• 2 tank cars for water transport.

80 more cars were ordered in 1911 from the Gothaer wagon factory Fritz Bothmann and Gluck.

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  Freight wagons in Anese station, JHR

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  Jordan Hejaz Railway trolley

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  Draisine at km 253

What all of the cars had in common was the arrangement of the four axles in Diamond type bogies, as well as the iron underframe, 10 m long and 2.3 m wide, and the center joint device. Overall, the quality of the very reasonably priced cars left a lot to be desired.

Present and Future

Amman train station ticket office closed

The maximum speed is 50 km / h. Currently only sections are in operation:

• from Damascus to Dar'a and Bosra (occasional traffic)
• the inner-Jordan line of the phosphate railway from Faraifa to Aqaba
• Market trains from Amman to Az Zarqa

The weekly, cross-border connection from Amman to Damascus was discontinued at the end of 2006.

According to publications in the trade press, there are or were plans to start building a standard-gauge line (approx. 30 km) between the two largest cities in Jordan, Amman and Az Zarqa , from 2009 , obviously using the existing line. It seems questionable whether a three-rail track will be laid and whether continuous traffic will still be possible on the Hejaz Railway. So far (2010) the project does not seem to have been started.

A normal gauge connection between Damascus and Amman has been discussed for a long time, but it has always failed because of political disagreements between Syria and Jordan. Should these projects be realized, they would bring about the economic "end" for the Hejaz Railway; For occasional tourist traffic alone, several hundred kilometers of route will not be sustainable in the long run. The strongest motive for maintaining the Hejaz Railway is probably its legal status as an indissoluble religious foundation, which makes a closure appear politically inopportune.

Museums

Salon car of King Abdallah ibn Husain I of Jordan in the Israel Railway Museum, Haifa

The renovated terminus in Medina (2012)

There are now two museums in Saudi Arabia dedicated to the history of the Hejaz Railway. The most important facility is being built in Medina on the site of the former train station. Some locomotives have already been transferred there, some of them have already been restored. A locomotive is operational and is moved back and forth over a short stretch of track under steam. In the locomotive shed at Mada'in Saleh (km 955.0) there is a smaller railway museum for the Hejaz Railway, which was refurbished around 2005.

There are also numerous exhibits on the Hejaz Railway in the Israeli Railway Museum in Haifa.

literature

Special steam train

• J. v. S. (di Josef von Schwegel ; 1836–1914): The Hedjaz Railway. In: August Böhm Edler von Böhmersheim (Red.): Communications from the Imperial and Royal Geographical Society in Vienna . XLVII. Tape. R. Lechner, Vienna 1904, ZDB -ID 206040-1 , pp. 47-55. (Full text online)
• Karl Auler (Auler Pascha): The Hejaz Railway, on the basis of a sightseeing trip and according to official sources . Supplementary booklets No. 154 and 161 to A. Petermann's communications from Justus Perthes' geographic institute . Perthes, Gotha u. a. 1906/08, ZDB ID 241574-4 .
• Alois Musil :  Nature and ethnology. The dangers of the Hejaz Railway. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, No. 16232/1909, October 28, 1909, p. 21 ff. (Online at ANNO ). .
• Rudolf Reinhard: The Hejaz Railway. With eight illustrations and a map based on photographs. In: Reclam's universe. 25.2 (1909), pp. 921-928.
• E (manual) A. Digit : The Mohammedan Railway (Hejaz Railway). Lecture given (...) on November 13, 1909 (...) . In: Journal of the Austrian (Eichischen) engineering and architects association . No. 9/1910. Vienna 1910, Vienna 1910, pp. 133–140. - Full text online (PDF; 41.5 MB) .
• Hermann Guthe : The Hejaz Railway from Damascus to Medina: its construction and its importance . (= Countries and peoples of Turkey. NF 7). ZDB -ID 1139650-7 , Gaebler, Leipzig 1917.
• William Ochsenwald: The Hijaz Railroad . University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville 1980, ISBN 0-8139-0825-6 .
• Hans-Jürgen Philipp: The Bedouin resistance against the Hejaz Railway. In: The world in Islam . Neue Serie, Volume 25, No. 1/4, 1985, pp. 31-83. (on-line)
• Erika Preissig, Günther Klebes: Railway construction and railway projects in the Orient and the economic and political goals pursued with them. In: Yearbook for Railway History. Volume 21/1989, ZDB -ID 510842-1 , pp. 43-102.
• Johannes Müller: Syria and the Hejaz Railway. In: Steam and Travel - Overseas Railways. Volume 1/89, ZDB -ID 1017034-0 . Röhr, Krefeld 1989.
• R (ichard) Tourret: Hedjaz Railway . Tourret Publishing, Abingdon 1989, ISBN 0-905878-05-1 .
• Shereen Khairallah: Railways in the Middle East 1856-1948 . (Political and Economic Background). Librarie du Liban, Beirut 1991, ISBN 1-85341-121-3 .
• Dieter Noll (Ed.): The Hejaz Railway. A German railway in the desert . DGEG, Werl 1995, ISBN 3-921700-68-X .
• D. Seiler: Steam in the Orient . In: Lok Magazin 3/2002, pp. 62–65.
• Benno Bickel: Full steam ahead through the desert. Locomotive and operating history of the Hedjazbahn and Baghdadbahn. 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 Baghdad railways. In: Jürgen Franzke (Ed.): Bagdadbahn and Hedjazbahn. German railway history in the Middle East. Nuremberg 2003, ISBN 3-921590-05-1 , pp. 112–119.
• Uwe Pfullmann: The Baghdad and Hedjaz Railway in the First World War 1914–1918. In: Jürgen Franzke (Ed.): Bagdadbahn and Hedjazbahn. German railway history in the Middle East . Nuremberg 2003, ISBN 3-921590-05-1 , pp. 125-138.
• James Nicolson: The Hejaz Railway . Stacey International Publishers, Turath 2005, ISBN 1-900988-81-X .
• Malte Fuhrmann: The Mecca Railway. In: Museum of Islamic Art - National Museums in Berlin (Ed.): Roads of Arabia - Archaeological Treasures from Saudi Arabia. [Exhibition catalog]. Wasmuth, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-88609-721-0 , pp. 289-297.
• Alfred Gottwaldt: Paul Levy . Engineer of the Hejaz Railway and the Reichsbahn . Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95565-065-0 .
• Shereen Khairallah: Railways in the Middle East 1856-1948 . (Political and Economic Background). Librarie du Liban, Beirut 1991, ISBN 1-85341-121-3 .
• Ulrich Fiedler: The change in meaning of the Hejaz Railway: A historical-geographical investigation (= Islamic Studies, Volume 94). Berlin: Schwarz, 1984, digitized at MENAdoc .

Web links

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

• Official website of the Jordanian Hejaz Railway
• Construction and history of the railway as well as the whereabouts of the southern part of the Hejazi Railway in Saudi Arabia,> 500 photos.
• Photos and information about the Hejaz Railway, then and now
• Locomotive overview of the Hejaz Railway

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Data partly collected during a study trip of the DGEG in February 2007.
2. ^ Walter Rothschild: Palestine Railways 1945-1948 . Dissertation. King's College, London 2009 or 2010, chap. 8, section A.
3. ^ Alfred Gottwaldt : Paul Levy . Engineer of the Hejaz Railway and the Reichsbahn. Published by the Centrum Judaicum . Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95565-065-0 (= Jewish miniatures, volume 155). 21 ff.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Schwegel: The Hedjaz Railway. P. 47.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Opening of the Hejaz Railway. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Abendblatt, No. 14781/1905, October 16, 1905, p. 12, bottom right. (Online at ANNO ). .
6. ↑ Julius Euting (1839–1913) ( Memento of August 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ): Through J. Euting's mediation, part of the facade of the Mschatta desert castle came to Berlin as a gift from the Sultan to Kaiser Wilhelm II
7. ↑ Hejaz Railway: In the Name of Allah. In: Der Spiegel. 50/1964.
8. ↑ IBSE telegram No. 202, September 2007, p. 10.
9. ^ Continental Railway Journal. 161 (2010), p. 127.