[5] On a number of occasions the Baldwins' six-coupled driving wheels either spread the rails or became derailed on tight curves.

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.

[6] 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.

[13] The SMR also acquired seven small shunting locomotives: two 0-6-0ST saddle tanks built in 1900 and 1902 that J. Aird & Co.[13] 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.

[24] As PR's finances deteriorated, in 1934 the United Kingdom government appointed a committee of investigation led by Sir Felix Pole, former chairman of Britain's Great Western Railway.

[25] The other members of Pole's committee were C. M. Jenkin-Jones of Britain's London and North Eastern Railway and the accountant Sir Laurence Halsey, who was a partner in Price Waterhouse.

[24] It identified serious under-investment, reporting that Jaffa and Tel Aviv stations were "inadequate and unsuitable" and "traffic congestion [was] considerable" around Lydda.

[26] In July 1935 in the UK House of Commons the Liberal MP Barnett Janner asked Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies: "whether he is aware of the discontent with the present services provided by the Palestine railways; and whether he can now give an assurance that, as a consequence of the recent official inquiry into this matter, remedial action will be set on foot during the current year?

[26] Jaffa harbour was so constrained by hazardous rocks that only small vessels dared to enter it; ocean-going cargo ships would lie off-shore and transfer their freight to or from the docks by lighters.

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.

[14] 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).

[30] 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,[30] a diameter suitable for low-speed freight work and also for mountain gradients.

[30] Class P also had 5 ft 6+3⁄4 in (1,695 mm) driving wheels:[30] a mixed-traffic diameter by British standards but larger than those of the H series and therefore more suitable for higher speed traffic.

[citation needed] 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,[43] 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.

[44] The latter were an effective replacement for PR's Baldwins on the steeply-graded Jerusalem line[48] but within a few months all had been transferred to double the diesel fleet on the HBT.

[55] After the latter was reopened in October, Haifa – El Kantara trains were run only three days per week compared with the previous daily service.

[57] The PR main line was a supply route for the North African Campaign that lasted from the Italian attack on Egypt in 1940 until the German surrender in Tunisia in May 1943.

Then in June and July 1941 PR served as a supply route for the British Empire invasion of Vichy Syria and Lebanon.

[58] In June 1941 Australian Army Engineers started building a line alongside the Suez Canal southwards from PR's terminus at El Kantara.

[59] In July 1941 they connected the new line with Egyptian State Railways (ESR) by a swing bridge at El Ferdan across the canal.

[69] On 22 April 1947, terrorists blew up an El Kantara – Haifa train near Rehovot, killing five British soldiers and a number of civilians.

[72] In 1948 terrorists attacked PR's head office, Khoury House in Haifa, and the resulting fire badly damaged the accounts department.

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...[79]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....[80]By the time the British withdrew from the Mandate in May 1948, railway operations had effectively ceased.

[81] For the remainder of 1948 railway services in the new State of Israel were confined to the area around Haifa, running southwards on the main line as far as Hadera and northwards to Kiryat Motzkin and later Nahariya.

One of the few train movements here after the British withdrawal was in July 1948 when Israeli forces launched Operation Danny to expel the Arab populations of Lydda and Ramla.

[citation needed] The 1935 Pole committee's proposals were eventually realized, in modified form, decades after Palestine Railways' demise.

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).

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.