Palestine Railways

The Jaffa–Jerusalem railway, funded by Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa à Jérusalem et Prolongements, was the first railway to be built in Palestine. Construction started on 31 March 1890 and the line opened on 26 September 1892.[2] It was built to 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) with many tight curves and a ruling gradient of 2% (1 in 50).[2] The eastern part of the line, in the Judean hills between Dayr Aban and Jerusalem, is particularly steep and winding. The "J&J"'s first locomotives were a fleet of five 2-6-0 Mogul tender locomotives from Baldwin in the USA, delivered in 1890 and 1892.[3] On a number of occasions the Baldwins' six-coupled driving wheels either spread the rails or became derailed on tight curves. As traffic increased the J&J obtained four 0-4-4-0 Mallet articulated locomotives from Borsig in Germany, delivered between 1904 and 1914.[3] The Mallets were intended to deliver greater tractive effort without spreading the rails, but they too suffered a number of derailments.

In 1915, during World War I, the Ottoman Army widened the track gauge between Lydda and Jerusalem to 1,050 mm (3 ft 5+11⁄32 in) to allow through running with the Hejaz Railway and removed the track between Lydda and Jaffa for military use elsewhere.[4]

In 1921, the British Government of Palestine seriously considered electrifying the line. Pinhas Rutenberg, the electricity concessionaire of Palestine, had been backed by High Commissioner Samuel in suggesting that the electrification of the line would not only be profitable but also crucial for the successful electrification of the country as a whole. However the Colonial Office backed off, fearing the heavy costs of this project[5]

This was a branch of the Hejaz Railway between Haifa and Daraa in southern Syria where it joined the Hejaz main line. Construction began at Haifa in 1902 and was completed at Daraa in 1905.[6] The Jezreel Valley line, like the Hejaz main line, was built to 1,050 mm (3 ft 5+11⁄32 in). Construction of a branch from Afula on the Jezreel Valley line to Jerusalem had begun in 1908 and reached Nablus by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.[7]

The Ottoman Empire needed to supply its forces holding the border of Palestine against British and Empire forces in Egypt. The planned railway from Nablus through hilly country to Jerusalem could not be completed in time, so from 1915 the German railway engineer Heinrich August Meißner oversaw the building of a 1,050 mm (3 ft 5+11⁄32 in) line westwards from El Mas'udiya to Tulkarm.[4] From Tulkarm the terrain became much easier and a line was built northwards to Hadera and southwards to Lydda where it joined the J&J and later became known as the Eastern Railway. It used the widened J&J track (see above) as far as Wadi Surar where it branched southwards towards the Ottoman front line. By October 1915 the line was operational as far south as Beersheba.[4] A branch was also built from Et Tine just south of Wadi Surar to Deir Seneid, where it branched again to Beit Hanoun and Huj near Gaza.[4] The Ottomans also extended the railway to Beersheba into Sinai as far as Kusseima.

The Egyptian Expeditionary Force of British and British Empire units was formed in March 1916. It began building the standard gauge Sinai Military Railway from El Kantara on the Suez Canal across Sinai, reaching Romani by May 1916,[8] El Arish in January 1917[9] and Rafah in March 1917.[10]

The SMR borrowed rolling stock and 70 locomotives from Egyptian State Railways including 20 Robert Stephenson & Co. 0-6-0s, 20 Baldwin 2-6-0s and 15 Baldwin 4-4-0s.[11] The SMR also acquired seven small shunting locomotives: two 0-6-0ST saddle tanks built in 1900 and 1902 that J. Aird & Co.[11] had been using on a civil engineering project in Egypt (probably the Assiut Barrage), four 0-6-0ST's that had been built in 1917 for the Inland Waterways and Docks Department in Britain and one German 0-6-0WT that was part of the cargo of a merchant ship that the Royal Navy captured in 1914.[12] The German locomotive had been built by Hanomag in Hanover in 1913[13] and all the saddle tanks had been built by Manning Wardle in Leeds, England.[11]

The EEF captured Beersheba in October 1917 and Gaza in November. [14] EEF engineers extended the SMR to Deir Seneid by the end of November 1917 and a branch to Beersheba by May 1918.[14] From Deir Seneid, EEF engineers worked northwards converting the Ottoman tracks to standard gauge, reaching Lydda by February 1918,[15] converting the branch to Jerusalem by June[16] and continuing as far as Tulkarm on the Eastern Railway. From there they built the standard gauge line on a new route northwest to the coast and then northwards, reaching Haifa by the end of 1918.[17]

As the EEF advanced into Palestine it formed a new organisation, the Palestine Military Railway, to operate the various railways of various gauges that came under its control. Royal Engineers units restored Palestine's railways to working condition.[18] The PMR laid a number of temporary 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in) narrow gauge lines, including one between Lydda and Jaffa[10] on the J&J trackbed from which the Ottoman army had removed the 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge track in 1915. The PMR borrowed several 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) locomotives to work the 1,050 mm (3 ft 5+11⁄32 in) narrow gauge tracks, which were a very tight fit.

Haifa East station in 1931 with passenger train and 1918 Baldwin H class 4-6-0

For standard gauge use overseas the British Government requisitioned many London and North Western Railway "Coal Engine" 0-6-0s and 50 London and South Western Railway 395 Class 0-6-0s. The British Government sent 42 LNWR and 36 LSWR locomotives to the PMR[25]

In 1918 the PMR ordered 50 new locomotives. British factories were fully occupied so the order was placed with Baldwin in the USA.[26] They were 4-6-0s of a simple wartime design, widely used elsewhere including on railways in Belgium.[26] The first ten were delivered to Palestine in April 1919.[27] They had 5 ft 2 in (1,570 mm) driving wheels suitable for mixed traffic use.[28]

The PMR suffered at least one serious accident. In about 1918 the older of the Manning Wardle saddle tanks that the PMR had acquired from J. Aird & Co. was shunting at Jerusalem when the weight of its train became too much for it to hold on the gradient.[12] The train ran away downhill towards Bittir and collided with an LSWR 395 Class that was climbing towards Jerusalem.[12] The resulting collision "practically demolished" the saddle tank.[12]

The LNWR 0-6-0s were old, worn out and performed very badly in Palestine, so PR retired all of them for scrap by 1922.[26] The LSWR 0-6-0s performed better,[25] so PR kept most of them in service until 1928[26] and retained the last nine as shunting locomotives until 1936.[29]

The four Manning Wardle saddle tanks from the Inland Waterways and Docks Department were identical so PR designated them class M.[12] These were satisfactory as shunting locomotives and PR kept them in service for many years.[12] The J. Aird & Co. Manning Wardles were dissimilar and the PMR had already lost the older one in 1918 in a collision on the Jerusalem branch with an LSWR 395 class (see above).[12] PR disposed of the Hanomag well tank and the former Aird 1902 Manning Wardle for scrap in 1928.[28]

The Baldwin 4-6-0 locomotives were successful on most of Palestine's standard gauge network but could not haul adequate loads on the steep gradients from Jaffa via Lydda to Jerusalem. In 1922 PR obtained six engines from Kitson and Company in Leeds, England, specifically designed to be powerful enough for the Jerusalem service. They were 2-8-4T tank locomotives designated class K. They had 4 ft 0 in (1,220 mm) driving wheels,[28] a diameter suitable for low-speed freight work and also for mountain gradients. The track gauge on the tight curves on the Jerusalem branch was widened from 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) to as much as 4 ft 9.75 in (1,467 mm)[30] but unfortunately even with this adjustment the heavy eight-coupled class K was unsuitable and suffered a number of derailments.

PR designated the Baldwin 4-6-0s class H. In 1926 six were shipped to Armstrong Whitworth and Company in Newcastle upon Tyne, England who rebuilt them as 4-6-2T tank locomotives, designated class H2.[31] In 1933 PR opened its own railway workshops in Haifa.[32] In 1937, with the help of some parts supplied by Nasmyth, Wilson and Company in Salford, England, the Qishon works converted five class H 4-6-0s to 4-6-4T tank locomotives,[33][34] designated class H3.

In 1928 PR bought one vertical-boilered 0-4-0T shunting locomotive[35] and two vertical-boilered steam-powered railcars for local services from Sentinel-Cammell in Shrewsbury, England.[31] Each railcar unit had two coach bodies articulated over three bogies. The shunter was capable of only light duties and by the end of the Second World War PR had stored it out of use.[35] PR found the railcar format inflexible, as if passenger numbers exceeded the capacity of a railcar it was not practical to couple up an extra coach.[36] In 1945 PR removed the Sentinel engines and converted the railcars to ordinary coaching stock.[37]

After 1928 PR retained a few 395 class 0-6-0s for shunting, but they were approaching 50 years old so in 1934 PR obtained three purpose-built 0-6-0T shunting locomotives from Nasmyth, Wilson to start replacing them.[35] These were designated class N and PR took delivery of seven more in the period 1935–38.[35]

North British Locomotive Co. P class 4-6-0, built for Palestine Railways 1935, in Israel Railways service on the turntable at Haifa in 1950

H class 4-6-0s hauled the Haifa – El Kantara service until 1935, when the North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow, Scotland supplied six more powerful 4-6-0s that PR designated class P.[35] These had a tractive effort of 28,470 lbf (126.6 kN): 16% more than the 24,479 lbf (108.9 kN) of classes H, H2 and H3.[28] Class P also had 5 ft 6+3⁄4 in (1,695 mm) driving wheels:[28] a mixed-traffic diameter by British standards but larger than those of the H series and therefore more suitable for higher speed traffic.

PR suffered frequent locomotive failures. In 1934 its locomotives averaged 7,860 miles (12,650 km) between failures, whereas the figure for locomotives in Great Britain for the same year was 88,229 miles (141,991 km).[38] Staff error caused 17% of failures but far more were caused by poor water, which PR's General Manager reported was "the most pressing of all the railway problems".[38] PR sought to alleviate this by building water softening plants at the main watering points on its network, frequently chemically testing the water and eventually fitting all locomotives with blowing down apparatus with which the driver could purge sludge from the boiler.[39]

Stanier 8F 2-8-0 70513, built by NBL in Glasgow in 1941, in Israel Railways service taking water at Zichron Ya'akov on 4 January 1949

PR had fuelled its locomotives with Welsh coal[29] but in June 1940 Italy declared war on the Allies and France surrendered to Germany and Italy, leaving the Mediterranean extremely dangerous for British merchant shipping. Early in 1942 PR belatedly began to convert its locomotives to burn oil,[40] but it did not complete the conversion programme until 1943.[29]

In 1941 Britain started to supply two types of 2-8-0 Consolidation freight locomotive to its Middle East Command. One was the ROD 2-8-0 class that had been designed in 1911 as the Great Central Railway Class 8K and that the UK's War Department (WD) had adopted as a standard design to be mass-produced for military traffic in the First World War. The other was the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Stanier 8F that had been designed in 1935 and that the WD now adopted as a standard design to be mass-produced for military use in the Second World War.

As Allied forces concentrated on defending Egypt and the Suez Canal from Italian and German attack the first shipments of 2-8-0s were delivered to Egypt,[41] but in March 1942 both types started to arrive in Palestine and by June 1942 24 ROD locomotives were working on PR and the Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli (HBT) line.[42] In 1944-45 the ROD locomotives were transferred out of Palestine and replaced by LMS locomotives[42] that had been in service on the Trans-Iranian Railway.[43] Other LMS locomotives were overhauled in Palestine in 1944 before being deployed either elsewhere in the Middle East or to the part of Italy now under Allied control.[44]

In the second half of 1942 the USA started to supply locomotives to the British Middle East Command. By December 1942, 27[42] USATC S200 Class 2-8-2 Mikados were working the PR and HBT main lines and two[42] USATC S100 Class 0-6-0T switchers were supplementing PR's shunting fleet.

By June 1943 12 Whitcomb 65-DE-14[45] 650 HP diesel-electric locomotives from the USA were working on the HBT and by 12 December more were working on the PR.[42] The latter were an effective replacement for PR's Baldwins on the steeply-graded Jerusalem line[46] but within a few months all had been transferred to double the diesel fleet on the HBT.[42] Whitcomb diesels were the HBT's principal motive power until the middle of 1944[46] when they were replaced with ROD 2-8-0s[42] and transferred to Italy.[47]

In June 1941 Australian Army Engineers started building a line alongside the Suez Canal southwards from PR's terminus at El Kantara.[57] In July 1941 they connected the new line with Egyptian State Railways (ESR) by a swing bridge at El Ferdan across the canal.[57] In August 1941 PR started operating a through service between Haifa and Cairo.[57] Construction of the line beside the canal continued until July 1942 when it reached El Shatt.[57] ESR then took over operation of the completed route.[57]

South African Army engineers built the first section of a new Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli (HBT) railway, branching off the 1050 mm gauge Haifa – Acre line and running along the rocky coast and through two tunnels to Beirut.[55] For its construction the HBT initially used 1050 mm gauge track throughout the Haifa – Beirut section for through running of traffic carrying railway construction materials.[58] The South Africans were transferred to other duties and the Haifa – Beirut section was completed by the New Zealand Railway Group.[58] The New Zealand Railway Group also operated the 1050 mm gauge Jezreel Valley railway between Haifa and Daraa on the Syrian border,[59] the Daraa – Damascus section of the 1050 mm gauge Hejaz Railway main line[59] and 60 miles (97 km) of branch lines including the 1050 mm line between Afula on the Jezreel Valley railway, Nablus, and Tulkarm on the main line between Haifa and Lydda.[59] The Afula – Mas'udiya service ended in 1932, and the Tulkarm – Mas'udiya – Nablus service in 1938, except for a 5 km dual gauge section between Tulkarm and the ballast quarries at Nur Shams.[32][60]

By August 1942, the Haifa – Beirut section was complete, the track was converted to standard gauge,[58] and the stretch between Haifa and Acre, which was shared with the Jezreel Valley railway, to dual gauge.[61] The new railway line started carrying through military traffic between Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon.[58] By then Australian Royal Engineers were already building the Beirut – Tripoli section, which they completed in December 1942.[58] PR operated the HBT between Haifa and Az-Zeeb[58] just south of the Lebanese border and the British military Middle East Command operated the HBT between Az-Zeeb and Tripoli.

Completion of the Ferdan bridge and HBT hugely enhanced PR's strategic role. PR's annual freight traffic grew from 858,995 tons in 1940-41 to 2,194,848 tons in 1943-44.[62] The huge growth in the number of trains increased the potential for accidents. There were three head-on collisions and in 1942 six H class 4-6-0s were written off in accidents. The war effort both increased wear on equipment and reduced resources for maintenance. In November 1944 a downpour derailed an El Kantara – Haifa train, killing seven people and injuring 40.[56]

The 1935 Pole committee's proposals were eventually realized, in modified form, decades after Palestine Railways' demise. In the early 1950s Israel Railways finally connected Tel Aviv to Haifa using two northern routes: First through a link to the Eastern Railway via the Bnei Brak railway station and later through a new coastal railway to Hadera where it linked up with the existing line to Haifa. These links however served the new Tel Aviv Central Station and were only connected to the Jaffa-Lydda-Jerusalem railway through the Eastern Railway, essentially the same indirect route used by Palestine Railways, until 1993 when the Ayalon Railway was constructed through the center of Tel Aviv. The railway junction in Niana, now called Na'an, was built, but rather than serving a line to Rehovot and Rishon LeZion, it served a rebuilt Railway to Beersheba. In 2013, Israel Railways opened a new rail line to Ashdod via the southern Tel Aviv suburbs of Rishon LeZion and Yavne, followed by an extension of the Lod-Ashkelon railway to Beersheba via Sderot, Netivot and Ofakim two years later, finally creating a southbound rail route that bypasses Lydda (now called Lod).

Israel dismantled much of the railway in Sinai in the period between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, re-using most of the materials to build the Bar Lev Line fortifications along the Suez Canal. In the 21st century, starting from Egypt in the south, Egyptian National Railways opened the El Ferdan swing bridge on 14 November 2001, replacing a bridge destroyed in the Six-Day War in 1967. From El Ferdan, work then started on slowly rebuilding the former route to El Arish, with the possibility of renewing the rest of the route to Gaza. The project includes a branch line to Port Said Container Terminal. In December 2008 Google Earth showed progress with stations as far as Bir el-'Abd while some remnants of the old trackbed towards El Arish and Rafah are still visible. Later in the first decade of the 2000s, the rebuilt line in the Sinai became neglected, disused and overrun by sandstorms in many locations. In July 2012, the Egyptian transportation ministry declared its intention to restore the line to Bir el-'Abd. However, this was not carried out and a few years later the construction of the New Suez Canal had since completely disconnected the Sinai from the rest of Egypt’s rail network until a new rail bridge is built somewhere across the canal.

• Cotterell, Paul (1984). The Railways of Palestine and Israel. Abingdon: Tourret Publishing. ISBN 0-905878-04-3.
• Foster, Timothy Charles (2018). Dodds, James; Dodds, Catherine (eds.). Tracks in the Sand: A Railwayman's War. Wivenhoe, Essex: Jardine Press. ISBN 9780993477942.
• Hansard, "Palestine (Railways)". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Commons. 17 July 1935. col. 1030–1033.
• Hughes, Hugh (1981). Middle East Railways. Harrow: Continental Railway Circle. ISBN 9780950346977.
• Judd, Brendon (2004) [2003]. The Desert Railway: The New Zealand Railway Group in North Africa and the Middle East during the Second World War. Auckland: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-301915-5.
• Lockman, Zachary (1996). Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20419-0.
• Rothschild, Walter (1992). "History of Ashdod Ad Halom Railway Station" (PDF). HaRakevet (18): 11. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
• Sherman, A.J. (2001). Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918-1948. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6620-0.
• Tourret, R. (1976). War Department Locomotives. Abingdon: Tourret Publishing. ISBN 0-905878-00-0.
• Tourret, R. (1989). Hedjaz Railway. Tourret Publishing. ISBN 0-905878-05-1.. This includes a lot on the narrow-gauge lines within Palestine.