Tehran Abd-al-Azim Railway
The narrow-gauge railway Tehran - Abd-al-Azim in Rey , which went into operation in 1888, is Iran's first railway line . Initially planned as a horse-drawn railway, it was operated as a Decauville railway with steam locomotives. Railway operations were stopped in 1962. Today a subway connects Tehran with Rey.
1861 - planning - horse tram
In January 1859 a Persian delegation traveled to Vienna on behalf of Naser al-Din Shah to conclude a consular treaty between Tehran and Vienna and to recruit talented craftsmen and engineers for the industrialization of Persia. Prime Minister Amir Kabir had started his reform and industrialization program and founded " Dar-ol Fonun ", the first technical university based on the western model. The Austro-Hungarian railway engineer Albert Joseph Gasteiger Freiherr von Ravenstein and Kobach was approached and enthusiastically accepted the order to build a railway in Persia. In just 6 months at the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna he learned “the ability to speak, read and translate easy Persian documents”. Gasteiger left Vienna on July 17, 1860 and reached Tehran on September 30.
When he arrived in Tehran, he quickly realized that he had been mistaken in his opinion about the culture of the Persians. “In Europe at that time, people still believed they were finding a land of a thousand and one nights, but in reality it was a broken state that was completely devastated.” This was due to the apparent lack of interest of the Qajar rulers in developing the country and instead only think of increasing one's own wealth.
“And like the master, so are the subjects. Every high and every little civil servant worked for their own pockets, the army officers shamelessly enriched themselves with the soldiers entrusted to them, so that they had to earn an additional income as unskilled workers and beggars in order to be able to make a living. The almost complete lack of an orderly accounting system also contributed to the complete breakdown of the Persian state finances. "
In February 1861, Gasteiger began surveying a horse-drawn tram from Tehran to the Abd-al-Azim mosque in Rey , a much-visited place of pilgrimage, nine kilometers away . He calculated the cost of building the railway with a deployment of 1,000 men and a construction period of three months at 18,000 tomans . Gasteiger hadn't expected what happened next. "A senior Persian official clapped his hands over his head and said that he had undoubtedly miscalculated and that the cost would have to be 30,000 tomans, otherwise it would be preferable to abandon the whole thing." Gasteiger remained steadfast in his calculation and refused to include the bribes for the court official in his calculations, and so the railway project was put on hold for the next 25 years.
1886 - Concession and construction of the railway
In December 1886, the project was offered to the French engineer Fabius Boital , who first signed a concession agreement with Naser al-Din Shah for the construction and operation of a steam-powered Decauville narrow-gauge railway. The Shah's court had meanwhile come to the conclusion that it would be much more convenient, instead of developing industry and business oneself, to conclude concession agreements with foreign companies and to concentrate on collecting concession income. Boital cashed the concession, which included the right to build and operate railways throughout Persia for 99 years, and sold it to the Belgian entrepreneur Edouard Otlet , whose son Paul Otlet became known as the founder of modern information science. Edouard Otlet founded the Société Anonyme des Chemins de Fer et Tramways en Perse on May 17, 1887 with a share capital of 2 million francs .
Edouard Otlet had started building and operating private railways across Europe. On May 20, 1876, he received the order from King Ludwig II of Bavaria to build a horse-drawn railway in Munich . In 1878, Otlet founded the Belgian Sociéte Anonyme des Tramways de Munich for this purpose . Only after much back and forth did the Munich magistrate decide in favor of Otlet's application and granted him a 30-year license. The Belgian had to pay 1% of his gross income to the municipality for the use of urban roadside. After a dispute with the Munich city council, Otlet was forced to sell his company to the German "Münchener Trambahn-Aktiengesellschaft" (MTAG) in the same year, which later became the Munich municipal transport company .
1888 - rail operations
In Persia Otlet had promised himself high profits. Since about 300,000 pilgrims visited the mosque of Abd-al-Azim annually, it seemed obvious to start building this route. A track width of 800 mm was chosen and a single-track stretch was laid from the Tehran bazaar to near the mosque of Abd-al-Azim. In Tehran, a small train station was built with three waiting rooms, one for men and one for women, with a hall in between for the Shah. The line was completed on May 31, 1888, and rail operations began in July 1888. The railway staff consisted of 5 European and 60 Persian employees.
The locals named the railway machin dudi (smoke machine) and the station even after the French gare . Instead of using the train, the pilgrims preferred to walk the 9 kilometers from Tehran to Abd-al-Azim as before, so that the whole enterprise became a financial disaster. The Belgian managing directors complained to Naser al-Din Shah and persuaded him to demonstratively take the train together with high court officials and the military. He agreed because he was ultimately involved in the income of the railway through the concession.
The Naser al-Din Shah's advertising tour was initially a complete success and the railway finally found the popularity expected by investors. However, some pilgrim accidents and a mullah who died on the railway were soon to provoke the anger of the clergy. The railway was denigrated as "satanic" and its use demonized.
For the Belgians, the investment did not pay off and they decided not to build further lines. Only with Reza Shah was the construction of new railway lines resumed. The Trans-Iranian Railway , built during his reign, brought about the breakthrough for a rail-based transport system in Iran.
From 1901, the train from Tehran to Abd-al-Azim no longer ran on a regular schedule. In 1962, rail operations were finally stopped.
literature
- Baron E. Beyens: Commerce et industrie de la Perse , Brussels, 1898
- Moḥammad ḤOasan Ḵān Eʿtemād al-Salṭana Ṣaniʿ al-Dowla Marāgaʾi: Ruznāma-ye ḵ-āṭerāt-e Eʿtemād al-Salṭana , ed. F. Sarāmad, Tehran, 1991
- Albert Houtum-Schindler: Persia , Encyclopaedia Britannica , XXXI, 1902 (10th edition), pp. 617-627
- Sayyed Moḥammad ʿAli Jamālzāda, Ganj-e šāyegān: Awzaʿ-e eqteṣādi-e Irān , new edition, Tehran, 1997
- Ḥosayn Maḥbubi Ardakāni: Tāriḵ - e moʾassesāt-e tamaddoni-e jādid dar Irān , 3 volumes, Tehran, 1978
- L'Etoile Belge: Le premier chemin de fer en Perse , June 7, 1888
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reinhard Pohanka, Ingrid Thurner: The Khan from Tyrol. Bundesverlag 1988, p. 21
- ↑ Reinhard Pohanka, Ingrid Thurner: The Khan from Tyrol. Bundesverlag 1988, p. 40
- ↑ Reinhard Pohanka, Ingrid Thurner: The Khan from Tyrol. Bundesverlag 1988, p. 41
- ↑ Reinhard Pohanka, Ingrid Thurner: The Khan from Tyrol. Bundesverlag 1988, p. 42
- ↑ Time travel - The history of the MVG - The beginnings: 1876 - 1889 , mvg.de, accessed March 6, 2018
- ↑ Houtum-Schindler, p. 625; Beyens, 1898, p. 14