The story
Background and predecessors
Jaffa–Jerusalem railway
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. 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). 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 US, delivered in 1890 and 1892. 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. 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.
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
Jezreel Valley railway
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. 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.
Ottoman military railways
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. 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. 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. The Ottomans also extended the railway to Beersheba into Sinai as far as Kusseima. Large sections of this line were deliberately targeted and destroyed by British forces in the May 1917 Raid on the Beersheba to Hafir el Auja railway.
Sinai Military Railway
The Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) 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, El Arish in January 1917 and Rafah in March 1917.
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. The SMR also acquired seven small shunting locomotives: two 0-6-0ST saddle tanks built in 1900 and 1902 that J. Aird & Co. 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. The German locomotive had been built by Hanomag in Hanover in 1913 and all the saddle tanks had been built by Manning Wardle in Leeds, England.
Palestine Military Railway
The EEF captured Beersheba in October 1917 and Gaza in November. EEF engineers extended the SMR to Deir Seneid by the end of November 1917 and a branch to Beersheba by May 1918. From Deir Seneid, EEF engineers worked northwards converting the Ottoman tracks to standard gauge, reaching Lydda by February 1918, converting the branch to Jerusalem by June 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.
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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. The PMR laid a number of temporary 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in) narrow gauge lines, including one between Lydda and Jaffa 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.
1936–1939 Arab Revolt
In 1936–1939 Palestinian Arabs opposed to Jewish mass immigration revolted against British rule. Railways were a particular target for sabotage. The British built blockhouses to protect bridges and regular military patrols of railway lines. Patrols were initially on foot, then in armoured freight vans propelled by locomotives with armoured cabs, and finally with dozens of rail-mounted armoured cars built at Qishon works. After one was blown up by a mine, killing a soldier, the front of each armoured car was fitted with a long bar propelling a pony truck intended to detonate any mine safely without injuring any of the armoured car's occupants. British soldiers made Arab hostages ride on the pony truck so that any mine would be likely to kill them.
Security measures failed to stop attacks on the railway. One attack damaged a Sentinel railcar. In October 1937 a more serious attack damaged a passenger train and prompted a further decline in passenger numbers. In 1938 sabotage derailed 44 trains, damaged 33 rail-mounted armoured cars, destroyed 27 stations and other buildings, damaged 21 bridges and culverts and destroyed telephone and signalling equipment and water supplies. A member of the Survey of Palestine recalled that "nearly all the stations on the railway had been burnt". For more than one period night running became so dangerous that it was suspended. In September 1938 first the Jerusalem line and then El Kantara line were closed by extensive sabotage. After the latter was reopened in October, Haifa – El Kantara trains were run only three days per week compared with the previous daily service. The worst year was 1938, in which 13 railway workers were killed and 123 injured.
1945–1948
Most ROD and S200 locomotives were withdrawn from Palestine before the end of the Second World War and the remaining few soon followed, but PR took 24 LMS 8F's and the two S100s into its locomotive fleet.
In 1945 Zionist paramilitary organisations formed an alliance, the Jewish Resistance Movement, which launched a war against British administration in which members of the Palmach, Irgun and Lehi organisations sabotaged the PR network at 153 places throughout Palestine. Terrorists robbed a train delivering wages to railway staff. In 1946 a terrorist bomb demolished the main part of the Haifa East station building. In the Night of the Bridges of 16–17 June that year, Palmach saboteurs destroyed 11 road and rail links with neighbouring countries including PR's 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge links with Egypt and Lebanon and its 1,050 mm (3 ft 5+11⁄32 in) gauge link with Syria.
On 22 April 1947, terrorists blew up an El Kantara – Haifa train near Rehovot, killing five British soldiers and a number of civilians. As security deteriorated, theft from the railway increased. British security forces failed to intervene to protect the railway and in some cases took part in looting its assets. In January 1948 the General Manager, Arthur Kirby, vainly pleaded with Sir Henry Gurney, Chief Secretary of the Mandate Government, for adequate armed protection for the railway and its 6,000 staff, otherwise they would cease to do their duty and "I cannot guarantee to keep the railways operating". In February Kirby noted:
...locomotives wrecked by mines have been repaired time and time again so that most of them, though blown up several times, are still working after 28 years of service – and working efficiently... We have no fewer than 50 personnel of the train crews absent from duty, some in hospital, suffering from the effects of having been interfered with while trying to perform their duty. Men have been killed while performing their duties. Running trains are subject to attack and the principal marshalling depot is constantly being fired over by snipers... [but] so long as the present Railway Management exists, it will endeavour to maintain the railways and ports as fully as possible without fear or favour and irrespective of politics.
On 31 March 1948 another train was blown up by a terrorist mine near Binyamina south of Haifa, killing 40 civilians and wounding 60. By April 1948 Kirby described snipers' and saboteurs' killing of railway staff as "incessant". In 1948 terrorists attacked PR's head office, Khoury House in Haifa, and the resulting fire badly damaged the accounts department. PR's telephone and telegraph network was destroyed and Jewish terrorists stole Kirby's car at gunpoint.
Kirby instructed his staff:
The intention of the Management is that the Railways will be kept in operation and handed over on 15th May as a going concern. The severe loss of Khoury House, Headquarters, and the secession of Arab staff in Haifa will not interfere with this intention... All staff reporting for duty will be allocated to the best advantage, irrespective of the Branch in which they have been hitherto employed...
Privately Kirby wrote to Gurney:
I have been expected to carry on the railways and ports under almost impossible conditions; I have taken upon myself risks and responsibilities that have seldom, if ever befallen the General Manager of a Colonial Railway; I have achieved more than could have been hoped for....
From Wikipedia’s article on Palestine Railways, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3