(rshsdepot) Blessed rails

[jdent1_@_optonline.net]

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From h a a r e t z . c o m 
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645404.html 

Last update - 01:03 15/11/2005
Sultan's blessing lives on for 100-year-old Turkish railroad
By Eli Ashkenazi

For the past two years, historians Yehuda Levanoni and Yaakov Shorer have been researching the Valley Railway. During the course of their work, they have witnessed how thieves have steadily depleted what is left of the antique tracks.

Levanoni and Shorer dreamed of finding an example of decorative railroad tracks, with the Ottoman Sultan's blessing molded onto them - very few of which were ever made.

Several months ago, while in the Negev, Levanoni came across railway tracks close to Kibbutz Mishmar Hanegev, onto which a concrete structure had been erected. A closer inspection revealed that he had finally found what he had been looking for. "I beat the thieves to it," he now says with undisguised glee.

The historic Valley Railway, which runs between Haifa and Tzemach and is part of the Hijaz Railway, which covered most of the Ottoman Empire in the early part of the last century, is now celebrating 100 years since its first journey - from Haifa to Damascus - on October 15, 1905.

The decision to use Haifa as the main port for the southern part of the Ottoman Empire led, according to Levanoni, to "massive growth. Haifa was transformed from a small community at the start of the 20th century into a large city by the end of the century. The railway also played a key part in allowing Jewish settlement in the Zebulon Valley, the Jezreel Valley, the Harod Valley and the northern part of the Jordan Valley. Indirectly, and perhaps even directly, the railway contributed to the entire Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel."

The researchers' work, which was commissioned by the Council for Restoration and Preservation of Historic Sites, will soon be published in a book on the history of the Valley Railway.

While the exact reason for the decorative tracks is not known, Levanoni and other researchers believe that they were laid to mark the end of a section of the track, ahead of the inauguration ceremony. The blessing is in the name of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who initiated the ambitious Hijaz Railway project. The blessing reads, "Be strong with the blessing of our master, the Amir of faithful, Sultan Abdul Hamid II! And (Allah will) support him!" The inscription was translated by Yitzhak Abadi.

According to Levanoni, the track made its way from the north of the country to the south just prior to World War I, when the designer of the Hijaz Railway, Pasha Heinrich August Meissner, started to construct a line to the Suez Canal. To build the line, some of the less-used tracks from the northern section of the railway were dug up and transported south. The decorated track was recently taken for restoration at a special facility near Hadera.

Very few of the special sections of track have ever been found - around three in total - and those that have been located are not fully intact. In the Galilee, a sawed-off piece of track was found, and in Saudi Arabia, an American archaeologist says that he found a small fragment of track, with the sultan's blessing, that apparently survived repeated attacks by Lawrence of Arabia.
 


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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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