Rebuilding Iraq's railways
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Khaleej Times 2 February, 2004
The railway station at Sheik Dari used to be a vibrant and picturesque stop just outside of Baghdad,
admired by hundreds of train passengers everyday.
Now the single-storey yellow brick station is a forlorn sight, its doors pulled out, windows smashed and furniture and electrical fittings stolen.
"What they couldn't take, they broke," said stationmaster Hashim Shakir, describing the attack last summer in the wave of lawlessness after Saddam Hussein was overthrown. "They were Iraqis but they were destroying Iraq."
"We used to have six passenger trains every day and many freight trains. There were lots of passengers, lots of activity," said Shakir, standing next to what had been his pride, the automated signalling system.
Wrapped in jackets and mufflers to protect them against the blustery wind blowing down the track, he and a friend were the only people on the platform when the train from Baghdad -- the only one to pass by each day -- pulled up for a one minute stop on its way northwest to the town of Qusayba on the Syrian border.
The console was streaked with dust and cables had been pulled out of the back and twisted aside.
Transformers and relays in adjoining rooms were broken and hurled to the ground and broken tiles and glass shards littered the floor of the station, 35 km (20 miles) west of Baghdad.
In the heyday of early 1900s rail travel in Iraq, trains went from Baghdad to Istanbul and linked to the Orient Express on the other side of Bosphorous, going all the way to Paris and London.
The railways were cheap and popular in Saddam's Iraq and used widely by the military, but the service deteriorated sharply in the 1990s as U.N. sanctions ate into the economy. Last year's U.S. invasion led to its breakdown.
Now the U.S-backed local authority in Iraq has earmarked about half a billion dollars to resurrect the country's trains. The programme is well under way with a pioneering and somewhat frontier spirit -- there are no signals, and messages between stations and train drivers are often exchanged through handwritten notes.
"It's the most basic form of railway operations possible," said Gordon Mott, an American who is principal railway adviser to the Ministry of Transportation.
Two passenger trains leave Baghdad each morning -- one for Qusayba and the other for the southern port city of Basra. Some freight has begun to move, including phosphate from a mine in the western town of Akashat.
An international service leaves the northern town of Mosul for the Syrian city of Aleppo once a week, but there are no trains between Baghdad and Mosul because of security worries.
The Baghdad-Mosul line passes through Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and other areas north of the capital where opposition to the U.S. occupation is fiercest. Trains have been attacked, sometimes by bandits looking for quick money, sometimes in anger against the new government.
The train services from Baghdad and the return journeys are timed to end well before sunset.
Mott said funds coming in would be used for track repairs, new locomotives, freight and oil tanker wagons, spare parts and a communications-based train control system which would be about the most advanced in the world.
Some money is also being spent on refurbishing Baghdad's main railway station, an imperial British-built building in the centre of the city with two clock towers and an old, dust-covered but working chandelier in the domed entrance hall.
The passenger coaches are also badly in need of repair.
But Dala Abdullah, a wrinkled, 65-year-old woman in a black abaya gown and headdress who was travelling to the town of Ramadi to visit relatives, was happy.
"The train is much safer," she said as the carriage swayed and rattled through Baghdad's suburbs, past freight wagons in a disused train yard and a bombed telecommunications exchange. "I am afraid of the roadside bombs aimed at the Americans when going by car."
It costs 750 dinars (about 50 U.S. cents) for a ticket on this train, whether to an outlying suburb, to Ramadi or on the full 350 km (250 mile) nine-hour trip to Qusayba. The trip to Basra, 12 hours and 550 km (340 miles), costs 1,000 dinars.
"It has to be a loss-leader as the country re-invents its industrial base," said Mott. "The railway has to be improved as a prelude to revamping industry."
While there are grand plans to extend services to Iran, to Turkey and to Syria's Mediterranean ports, he says the primary job is to improve the basic domestic train service.
"I have said when I leave, I'm going by train," Mott said in his crowded office at Baghdad's main railway station. "I am going by train from here to Europe. I am going to do it."
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Baghdad Office / Agents
Mr. Walid Abdul-Amir Alwan
Bab Al-Mudham
P.O. Box 489, Baghdad - Iraq
Mobile: +964 790 183 1726,
E-mail: itmbaghdad@tcph.org
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