2023, Nick Augusteijn / ProMediaAn aging diesel locomotive transporting wagons of phosphate across a dusty old narrow-gauge track does not really evoke the image of a grand old railway. And yet that is what the final years of the Hejaz railway looked like: a branch line between phosphate mines and the port city of Aqaba in Jordan, now too abandoned. The grand vision was a railway line connecting the Ottoman capital Istanbul, seat of the Caliphate, to the holy sites in the Arabian provinces. And one could also argue that Saudi Arabia’s Haramain high-speed railway between Medina and Mecca via Jeddah is akin to a successor of the Hejaz line. A site forgotten and overlookedRailTech stumbled upon the more remote sections of the Hejaz railway on the northern edge of the Wadi Rum valley in Jordan.

Source: The North Africa Journal July 04, 2023 08:00 UTC