I heard there was a connection to Turkey and UAE??
I believe it connects to Turkey and possibly also Syria.
Not sure about UAE, but that would seem difficult.
LC
I know there is a conection to the Turkish Railroad system.
A reliable source told me that when Iraq RR locomotives were fitted with the hardware for the new dispatch/train control system installed as part of the reconstruction project, the locomotives were taken inside the Turkish boarder. I believe that was done because the builder of the system hardware did not want to put their technicians in an area as dangerous as Baghdad.
If it’s conected to Turkey would there be through conctions to Europe?
Yes, via Turkey, you can reach Europe. A rail connection to the UAE seems unplausible, because there is no common boundary. You would have to use a railferry, but I don’t know, whether such a ferry exists in Iraq. I don’t believe, Kuweit has a railroad. Saudi-Arabia, another neighbour of Iraq, does have a railroad from Dharan to Riad, but id does not connect with the Iraqi system. Neither do the railroads of Jordan.
So can a buy a ticket or even ship a boxcar of relief for the people there from Europe to Iraq?
I know that Iraq was run by the Brits who helped build there RR System in WW1 and 2
What kind of boxcars ?
Is there anything the could backhaul to Europe ?
Are you still in New York, or are you back in Cleveland ?
TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Putting Iraq ’s trains on track C.R. firm helps make Iraqi railroad safer By George C. Ford The Gazette E quipment designed in Cedar Rapids is being installed on Iraqi national railroad locomotives to help prevent deadly collisions in the war-torn country. Wabtec Railway Electronics, 5250 N. River Blvd. NE, received a contract from Mafeks International, a U.S.-Turkish joint venture, to develop and supply its electronic train management system…
The above is from the Cedar Rapids Gazette dated 12-4-06. The Gazette wants money to gaze upon their stories. I only quoted a small portion of the rather long article.
The installation and crew training was being done in Turkey for the safety of all involved. This would make one think there is a rail connection. If this was part of Kaiser Willhelm’s Berlin to Bagdad railroad to make inroads into Britain’s sphere of influence prior to 1914, I know not.
It is interesting that as the system is being implemented, the entire Iraq rail system will be dispatched from Cedar Rapids. Copper wire along the right of way is going the way of the telegraph key.
Here is a map showing the connection to Turkey, it cuts across a little corner of Syria.
Irak is how the country’s name is spelled in German.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ORIENT-EXPRESS-BAGHDAD-TRAVEL-VINTAGE-POSTER_W0QQitem
Z270065738221QQihZ017QQcategoryZ28009QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Please don’t think that I am trying to promote the sale of anything on this forum. But I just bought this poster as Christmas gift and I think it’s pretty cool and it fits the topic of discussion.
This site has maps of Iraq showing the railroads
Cedar Rapids eh?? So if we can dispacth a railroad in Iraq from Cedar Rapids Iowa…whoes to say we can not dispacth a US railroad from Manilla Philipines?
Can’t help you with the article, as I don’t subscribe to the Gazette either. Did find Wabtec’s site, though- http://www.wabtec.com/railroad/railroad_home.asp
…Mafeks hired Wabtec to develop an onboard train control system. ‘‘All of it is communications- based using a satellite,’’ said Stephen Graham, Wabtec vice president of train control marketing. ‘‘It literally gives us the capability of controlling the Iraqi railroad from Cedar Rapids.’’ Knott said that will happen during testing of the system in the first quarter of 2007. ‘‘Originally, they were going to do it all from Baghdad, but we have come up with a technical way to dispatch the trains from Cedar Rapids,’’ he said. ‘‘We will actually run trains in Iraq for two weeks.’’ … Cedar Rapids Gazette 12-4-06
Chinese train dispatchers will work cheaper. How long before these jobs are exported? As the technology improves, why not a virtual “crew” staring at a screen monitoring several views from a moving train and puncing a keyboard accordingly? St. Louis to Chicago courtesy of the boys in Bejing.
To rephrase the mantra at Schools of Business in American Universities 40 years ago, We do not need to what we are supposed to be doing. We only need to know how to manage that about which we know nothing.
Railroads in Iraq and Turkey are 4’ 8.5" gauge so in principle it should be possible to ship stuff all across Europe. Examples of the British LMS 8F 2-8-0’s survive in both countries.
When the (English) Channel Tunnel opened for business in 1994, one of the first freight trains thru it was a special laid on for the US Army. It transported a whole US Army field hospital all the way from a base in Britain to one of the former Soviet Republics as part of the relief effort following an earthquake.
More recently staff at DRS, one of the open access operators in the UK, organised a special relief train that ran all the way from Carlisle, England to Kosovo. Apart from in the Channel Tunnel the special was worked throughout by the same locos, a pair of ex-British Rail class 20’s which date back to 1957!
I posted a link to aerial pics of a rather large Baghdad rail facility a week or two ago, but here is a link to the rail line as it crosses the Syrian border. You can see a small wye (looks to be just large enough for a few engines) and there are rail yards on either side of the border. You can also see the heavy truck traffic at this location.
I followed the rail line out of Bagdad with google earth and “flew” the entire system. I saw lots of trains on the NNW route to the border. Back-tracked to the line above the large lake, and went north to the Syrian border crossing, then back to Bagdad with the eastern route. Bagdad south to Basra has a few bridges that are out but are under repair. Some places were the imagas are not clear it helps to “fly” higher to follow the route. The longest trains I saw were .5 miles long. You can see the changes in the alinment on the older sections. The newer sections have large passenger stations and grade seperation on most roads. Also I passed many places that are in the news were our Military is doing there duty so well and I thank them.
I was there in the big sandbox during the initial invasion back in March 2003 with the Rakkasan’s 101st ABN. We saw the frieght yard in Baghdad and it was pretty tore up. By the time we moved up to Tal Afar / Sinjar area June 2003 we saw only one track that ran up into Mosul. The Kurds tried to maintain the rail the best they could and honestly could not keep it running before and during the War.
I believe that our Division had infused money into the railroad along with the pipeline as part of the national rebuilding effort during the latter part of 2003. I do remember talking to one of our interpreters about the railroad and he stated that the rail was initially surveyed by the Brittish and Germans Circa WW1 through WW2.
I also recall them saying that the guage of the rail was not compatable with any other rail system going into Jordan, Syria or Turkey.
The Iraqi Republic Railways Company is a national asset owned by the Ministry of Transportation. It is operated and maintained by professional Iraqi railwaymen who happen to be Shia, Sunni, Kurd, and Assyrian Christian – they make little distinction. There is no “Kurdish effort” to maintain or operate the railway and none of the railway lies within the current borders of the three Kurdish provinces (Sulymaniya, Dahuk, and Erbil). The Kurds are interested in building new rail lines between Kurdistan and Turkey and Iran, but not necessarily between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq.
The IRR’s sole rail connection is with Chemin de Fer Syriana (CFS) at Rabiya, Iraq/Nurabiya, Syria. Both are standard-gauge and interchange (was) heavy. Approximately 60 km further is the Syrian/Turkish border towns of Qamishli/Nusaybin, where CFS interchanges with Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devlet Demiryolları (TCDD), the Turkish state railway. The CFS turns east at Qamishli and runs to Dair Es Zoar, Aleppo, and Damascus, eventually reaching the ports of Latakia and Tartous. The TCDD runs east from Nusaybin to Gaziantep, paralleling the border as far as Karkamis, where it turns inland. A map showing this is at:
http://www.trainsofturkey.com/maps/turkey_map_2004_jpc_v6.gif
There’s a once-weekly through sleeper from Istanbul to Aleppo, by the way, and a once-weekly through sleeper from Istanbul to Tehran. The Istanbul-Aleppo sleeper runs via Fevzipasa; the Karkamis-Aleppo line is intact but long out of service. Through sleeper service between Syria and Iraq was restarted in late 2003 after about 15 years of being cancelled due to war and sanctions. The Iraq-Syrian passenger service was thanks to the diplomatic efforts of my predecessor in Iraq, who got the CPA to accede to this. Unfortunately as the security in Iraq collapsed in 2004, this service became unsustainable and ended in 2004.
Actually the TCDD is the bor
Thanks, Mark for the explanation. Still very little of it makes any sense in the big picture view. I am so glad you made it home in a timely manner.