BAGDAD RAILWAY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 7 January 1928, Page 9

BAGDAD RAILWAY

ALEPPO A JUNCTION

A STEP toward realising the railway pospossibi 1 ities ot .Aleppo in the north ot _ _ Syria has lately been taken in the opening of an express service to it over the old Bagdad railway line from Constantinople, states the ‘‘New York Times.” Aleppo is one of the most interesting railway junctions in the world. The old Bagdad line, potentially the shortest rail route between Western Europe and India, connects there with the French railways of Palestine, Egypt, and the Sudan, a chain of lines which is potentially the likeliest rail route between Europe and South Africa. These great potential routes connecting three continents by rail, pivot on Aleppo. Hence the interest which attaches to the new Constan-tinople-Aleppo express service.

The Wagon-Lits Company which began the new service on July 2, has announced it as the first instalment of an eventual service to Bagdad. At present the old Bagdad line extends only to Nisibin in Upper Irak. Beyond Aleppo, local trains which lie toward Nisibin. Up from Bagdad the line has been pushed to Shergat below Mosul, but the gap between Nisibin and Shergat has never been filled in.

The new service is the first through civilian service which has ever been operated hum what was once the Bagdad Railway. The Lerimins opened the last of the tunnels which breach the Taurus Range just in time to surrender the entire line to the British in October, 1918. The Taurus Tunnel System was the last o - ap between Constantinople and Nisibin, a distance of 1100 miles, and when the line was surrendered the tunnels were finished except for their concrete facing. British military authorities took over the line and worked it in two sections, the section between Constantinople and Konia being maintained in rather better shape than the section beyond Konia and Adana, Aleppo and Nissibin. Civilians with military permits could use it, hut the trails from Constantinople only ran to Konia, and L° m Konia the 1 rains for Aleppo stopped overnight en route at 80/.anti at the top of the Taurus and at Adana down in the Cilician Plain beyond the Taurus.

From that time until after the end of the Greco-Turkish War the line and its rolling stock went to rack and ruin. Few railroads have been more magnificently built, and none has

LINKING THREE CONTINENTS

ever been pounded to pieces more ruthlessly. The armies which surged back and forth across it as the Greco-Turkish War progressed maintained it no more than was necessary to enable it to supply their immediate needs. AVhen peace finally came what remained of it from Constantinople to Yenidje, just beyond the Taurus in Cilicia, was left in Turkish hands, and beyond Yenidje to Adana, Aleppo and across the Euphrates toward Nisibin, it was handed over to a French company. Since then there has been ample time to restore it, and a civilian service has been operating for some time over it, through passengers from Constantinople to Aleppo changing at.Konia and Yenidje. From Aleppo-the French railways afford direct connection with Damascus, where a rack-and-pinion line drops down through the Leban-. on to Beirut on the coast. From Damascus also the narrow gauge ITeja'z line runs to Ed-Dei’oah and thence to Haifa on the coast, whence the British standard gauge lines run south to Jerusalem, Cairo and Khartoum. What the WagonLits Company has now done is to open a through service twice a week between Constantinople and Aleppo. Like all the European express services operated by the company, the trains consist of sleeping and.dining cars and arc open to first-class passengers only. The service begins in the hot season, but it y ill open the next Fall’s tourist traffic the first direct overland route to Syria and Palestine, which has ever been available to the ordinary Westerner. Hitherto the Western tourist has had to travel to Palestine via the Mediterranean and Egypt, a far more rauodabout and slower route from Europe. The Bagdad Railway’s branch line to Angora had a similar experience during the Greco-Turk-ish War. It is an older line, however, for it was originally intended to be the main Bagdad line. Tt was accordingly completed and an ordinary train service was operating over it before the Great War. The Wagon-Lits Company has now begun operating an express service from Constantinople to Angora three times a week in conjunction with the daily Simplon-Orient Express from London and Paris to Constantinople. The Bosphorus lias not yet been tunneled, and the Wagon-Lits Company ferries its passengers from Sirkedji Station to Constantinople to Haidar Pasha, the old Bagdad Railway terminus, on the Asiatic side.