Rail transport in Lebanon
Rail transport in Lebanon began in the 1890s as French projects under the Ottoman Empire but largely ceased in the 1970s owing to the country's civil war.
[2] Syrian railways connecting the two cities (90 mi or 140 km over the crest of the Mount Lebanon range)[3] or another port were planned as early as 1871 but were not enacted.
The Ottoman response to the insurrection included a number of railway concessions—quickly sold to foreign interests—to improve the development and centralized control of the region.
[5] Beyhum sold the concession later that year to the French Beirut–Damascus Tramway (French: Compagnie de la voie ferrée économique de Beyrouth–Damas)[5][6] or Lebanon Railway, which was anxious to forestall two mooted British lines, one from Jaffa[7] and another from Haifa,[6][2][n 1] either of which would have undercut Beirut's status as the primary port of the northern Levant.
[11] The entry of American, Indian, and Australian wheat into the European market amid the continuing Long Depression, however, undercut that trade while the railway was still under construction.
[14] Damascene traders had thought the Beirut railway would allow them to export their grain more cheaply; instead, as early as the 1894 harvest, the rail flooded the market, collapsing prices and margins.
[15] Completion of the line to the coast did not improve matters, since the world market was trading at still lower prices[15] and the premium once commanded by Hauran wheat—which, being hand-harvested, might include pebbles or weeds—was now lost to machine-reaped grain from the United States.
Part of the locomotive exploded on the 7% incline east of town and, not thinking to apply the brakes, the train was allowed to fly back through the station.
The concession for the Tripoli–Saida line was purchased from its original holder, a Syrian, by the French Société ottomane des libanais nord et sud de Beyrouth.
[citation needed] Following the First World War, France held the mandate for Syria and Lebanon under the auspices of the League of Nations.
[citation needed] Competition between the French port at Beirut and the British one at Haifa led to tariff wars and, in 1921, land swaps in Palestine for Syrian railway rights.
[12] Instead, engineers from South Africa and Australia completed a standard-gauge line along the coast between Haifa and Beirut by 24 August 1942 and expanded this to Tripoli Railway Station by 18 December 1942.
[12][21] This Haifa–Beirut–Tripoli Railway (HBT) was the last link connecting the European and North African standard-gauge rail networks,[7] apart from the ferry across the Bosphorus at Istanbul, but it never operated for civilian use.
Instead, the British maintained it under the control of their military as late as February 1948, when the Jewish insurgency in Palestine destroyed the bridges near the tunnels at Ras al-Nakura.
[12] The Polish diesel locomotive class SP45 for this line continued to be run once a month at the Furn el Shebbak stockyards as late as 2002,[12] but service was not resumed.
After World War II, the Wagons-Lits company gradually withdrew and operation of the Taurus Express was taken over by the Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi state railways.
For political reasons, the through service to Baghdad was suspended and the main train curtailed at Gaziantep, but the weekly through seat cars Istanbul-Aleppo were maintained.
[1] In 2011, Dr. Maroun Kassab, an architect and assistant professor, proposed a coastal metro system that can capitalize on the existing lands owned by the ministry and that can run underground from Tyr to Tripoli.
