Rail transport in Lebanon
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The rail traffic in Lebanon was during the Lebanese civil war set and since then no longer included. The railway network, which was created from 1891, was operated in the 20th century by the Chemin de fer de l'État Libanais .
Narrow gauge
The first railway in Lebanon , the Lebanonbahn , was built by the Société des Chemins de fer Ottomans économiques de Beyrouth-Damas-Hauran , a French company, with a gauge of 1050 mm on the basis of a concession from the Ottoman Empire . It connected Beirut with Damascus and went into operation on August 3, 1895. The 143 km long route crosses the Lebanon Mountains and Anti-Lebanon . This was technically complex. There were switchbacks and 33 km of rack sections . The speed to be achieved and the load to be attached per train were so tightly limited that the capacity of the train was therefore low. The operating company was renamed Chemin de Fer Damas - Hama et Prolongements (DHP) a few years later .
The most important station on the way was Rayak . There is a built also by the DHP joined from 1906 route via Homs to Aleppo on. However, in view of the technical parameters of the Baghdad Railway currently under construction, it was built in standard gauge . The rail traffic between Aleppo and Damascus was broken here: Because of the different track widths, all goods had to be reloaded and all passengers had to change trains. This transferred the capacity bottlenecks on the narrow-gauge railway to this connection.
Both lines, both the narrow-gauge railway and the connection to Aleppo, were destroyed on the Lebanese side during the Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990. On the Syrian side, the narrow-gauge railway is still in operation for tourism (see: Railway in Syria ).
Standard gauge
In addition to the connection in standard gauge to Aleppo mentioned, there were other standard gauge routes in Lebanon . This network was created in 1911 from a connection from Tripoli to Homs , Syria , also built and operated by the DHP. In 1942, due to the war , this connection was extended to Palestine as a military railway under British control and operated as the Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli (HTB) railway. In the south it was connected to the Palestine Railways , the railway system of the British Mandate Palestine , which in turn was connected to the Egyptian standard gauge network. For a short time there was a continuous connection from Istanbul in Turkey to Aswan in Egypt .
However, the railway was used exclusively for military purposes and was never opened to civil traffic during the period of continuous operation. A key position of Lebanon in rail transport between the European and North African standard gauge networks remained mere theory. The British military authorities refused to open the continuous rail line on the HBT section of the route from Istanbul to Cairo . From 1946 on , the Taurus Express ran twice a week with through coaches to Tripoli and then on the road to Haifa . In 1948 the through cars to Tripoli were no longer listed.
Even before the state of Israel was founded, the connection was broken in 1948 by Israeli resistance fighters on the border with Lebanon near the chalk cliffs of Rosh HaNikra . From June the route north of Azzib was closed. It should never be used again. Today there is a wall separating the tunnel into a 200 m long Israeli and a 50 m long Lebanese part.
The line in Lebanon was operated by the Chemin de fer de l'État Libanais (CEL) until this line was also destroyed in the civil war after 1976. Until the total shutdown of the Lebanese rail network after the civil war in the 1990s, a few modified Uerdingen rail buses , which were acquired by the German Federal Railroad in the mid-1980s, were in use.
Other rail transport
Electric trams existed in Beirut and Tripoli .
future
As part of the EUMedRail project of the European Commission, there are plans to rebuild the 80 km long former route between Beirut and Tripoli.
literature
- Paul Cotterell: The Railways of Palestine and Israel . Tourret Books, Abington 1986, ISBN 0-905878-04-3
- Johannes Müller: Syria and the Hejaz Railway (= steam and travel / Überseeische Eisenbahnen 1/1989).
- Erika Preissig and Günther Klebes: Railway construction and railway projects in the Orient and the economic and political goals pursued with them . In: Jahrbuch für Eisenbahngeschichte 21 (1989), pp. 43-102.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.tramz.com/tva/lb.html
- ^ DVV Media UK: Lebanon railway revival discussed . In: Railway Gazette . ( railwaygazette.com [accessed April 2, 2018]).