The Hejaz railway opened in 1908 between Damascus and Medina in present-day Saudi Arabia also used 1,050 mm (3 ft 5+11⁄32 in) gauge.

[7] The Baghdad Railway had progressed as far as Aleppo by 1912, with the branch to Tripoli complete, by the start of World War I; and onwards to Nusaybin by October 1918.

[8] The Turks, who sided with Germany and the Central Powers, decided to recover the infrastructure south of Aleppo to the Lebanon in 1917.

The Baghdad Railway created opportunity and problems for both sides, being unfinished but running just south of the then-defined Syrian–Turkish border.

[7] The next big developments in Syrian railways were due to the political manoeuvering leading up to and during World War II.

As Turkey had sided with Germany in World War I, the Allies were concerned with poor transport in the area, and their ability to bring force on the Turks.

Covering the development of the ports of Tartus and Latakia, they were initially connected by rail to Al Akkari and Aleppo in 1968 and 1975 respectively.

An irrigation project on the Euphrates, resulting in the construction of the Tabqa Dam, drove the connection of Aleppo to Al-Thawrah (1968), Raqqa (1972) Deir ez Zor (1973), reaching the old Baghdad Railway at Al Qamishli in 1976.

It opens on the platform at Aleppo, next to the two blue-and-gold Wagons-Lits sleeping cars of the Taurus Express bound for Istanbul.

After the second world war, 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.

In 2001, the Aleppo portion of the Toros Express was speeded-up and given a proper Syrian sleeping-car instead of the two very basic Turkish seat cars.