First some photos from pre-Mandate Turkish-rule days, ending with one British military base locomotive, WWI. Original narrow gauge line, charter obtained by French-trained engieer, Joseph Navon, son of Eliyahu Navon, who represented the “Jews of Jerusalem and surounding ares” in the Turkish Parliament:
British mandate and pre-diesel Israeli standard gauge:
Great shots David, are any of those locomotives still around?
Interesting shot in the pre-mandate section, the last one with what looks like a Baldwin trench locomotive hauling (presumeably) British troops.
Exactly, Firelock, at a WWI British miliary base, probably near Rafa.
The 2-6-0 on the turntable at Jerusalem, and much else of the original Jaffa - Jerusalem equipment was from the failed French attempt to build the Panama Canal.
The original Jerusalem station still stands, and Jaffa - Jerusalem is now standard gauge as in the Mandate period, but not currently served by rail. Not much else in the photographs do, however. Don’t know of any steam preserved other than one narrow gauge from the Haifa-Jordan railway in the Haifa RR Museum, forget the wheel arrangement.
David, I agree with Firelock76. Great shots! Before I burn out my computer looking for books on the subject can you list any that have been published to date.
If you are interested in locomotive details and history you can’t go past:
“Middle East Railways” by Hugh Hughes, published by the Continental Railway Circle in 1981.
The 600mm Baldwin 4-6-0T shown above as the last photo in the first post is identified on page 36 as being No 622, seen near Jaffa in 1918.
I believe an ex War Department Stanier 2-8-0, last operated in Turkey, is preserved in Israel.
Peter
Not to distract from the precise topic, but I think Iraq had far more interesting steam:
and with the leaps and bounds being made in underwater exploration and recovery, it might be time to see where PC 504 actually reposes, as it might be retrievable. New Zealanders have restored locomotives in worse initial shape!
Correction to my last post and additions. The Jerusalem - Jaffa line was standard-gauged by the British. It was cut-back from its convenient original Jerusalem station to the Mslcha shipping area because of a real-estate scheme and is inconvient as well as slow for travel to T.A. But at the T. A. end it is through routed through the Ayalon North-South highway and rail corridor, joining the Msndate period line from Beir Sheva, and now farther south frolm Oran, perhaps some day to be extended to Elat or more sensibly connected to the Jordanian line to Aqaba and then to Elat,. The junction is at Na’an, south of Ramla, which is south of Lod. The Ayalon corridor through T. A. connects a the north end with the main post-Independence line north to Haifa and Naharia and to a branch splitting to Kfar Saba. Service through the corridor in T. A. is fequent enough that I use it as a rapid transit line between the four T. A. stations. None of this existed in the steam days. There was no direct T. A. - Haifa line, but there was a line still used (at least in part for freight) north from Lod, close to the “Green Line” and swinging over to the coast and the new direct line north of Haders. But in the steam days the Jerusalem - Haifa train had a genuine dining car. It was still running with a diesel in 1960 at the time of my first visit.
The new Jerusalem - T. A. direct line through Lod (Ben Gurion) Airport will change travel considerably.
Overmod, can we have some details on the Iraqi locomotive?
Most of the ‘hard’ data I have on the PC class comes from the Hugh Hughes book Peter mentioned. Four of these were ordered, one of them was ‘sunk’ enroute. All three working locomotives apparently survived well into the 1960s, although I doubt they have survived the intervening ‘times of troubles’ between then and now. As I recall, I asked Mark Hemphill to look around or ask to see if anyone knew the subsequent story of any of the PCs ‘as of’ the American administration of the Iraqi system in the postwar years, but I don’t recall reading anything by him about them.
Drawings of the Iraqi Pacific appear in O.S Nock’s “The British Steam Locomotive 1925-1965” published by Ian Allen (in the early 1970s?). It was shown as an example of a locomotive designed for oil burning with a narrow firebox, in conjunction with the British conversions from coal of the late 1940s caused by miner’s strikes.
These locomotives carried names, “Baghdad” and “Mosul” among others after major cities on the line.
Peter
Isn’t it ‘The British Steam Railway Locomotive’? I should have had a copy long ago and now have the excuse to rectify the deficiency!
Something else I did not know, in part because I wouldn’t have thought to ask, is that Britain had a counterpart to the American frenzy for oil conversion in the late 1940s, for the same stated reason. I wouldn’t think that under a nominally Socialist government the railways would get very far with planning for oil conversion; presumably this was in the part of the late '40s before nationalization into British Rail? Could this have been a political factor accelerating nationalization? Not to be overly lazy … but what are some good sources for this, in addition to Nock’s?
Man, that hing looks like a cross between the “Commodore Vanderbilt” and the locomotive that pulled the “Fuehrer Sonderzug.”
Anyone checked the garages at Saddam’s old palaces? Maybe there’s one squirreled away in one of them.
Hey, US forces in Iraq have found old Sherman tanks in Iraqi army tank parks, although not in the best of condition, so anything’s possible. They even found some Renault FT-17 tanks from WWI in Afghanistan!
The least likely source is a children’s book, “The Dumpy book of Railways of the World” one of a series on transport which includes an amazing amount of useful data, if badly edited. Iraq scored two locomotives, a Stanier 2-8-0 class class TD and the PC. There is a (very small) outline diagram and the following details:
TE: 31 080 lbs, 2 cyls 21 x 26 in., BP: 220lb, Coupled Wheels 5’9", Weight, engine and tender 335 964 lbf. Tender 6000 gal water, 1750 gal oil. Length engine and tender 71’ 9-1/2", Built by Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns.
On the same page (given the thread title) were two Israeli locomotives, a class “LMS-8F” which obviously looked a lot like the Iraqi TD and a Class P, a 4-6-0 built by North British in 1934-35. The rear cover of the book included coloured side elevations of nine locomotives, including a UP Challenger, “Silver Link” and the Iraqi PC in apple green.
Did any contemporary or later authors mention anything about how successful Bulleid’s Leader might have been if it had been equipped with oil firing as originally intended?
I haven’t seen anything about the Leader being more successful if oil firing were to be used. While it would have made the life of the fireman much more comfortable, I believe that there were so many technical difficulties with the rest of the locomotive that it wouldn’t have changed anything.
In H.A.V. Bullied’s book on his father’s work, I recall seeing an early version of the “Leader” concept as a 4-6-4 tank with streamlining like the Pacifics. If Bullied had stopped with that concept, the locomotive may have been a success.
Even the CIE CC 1, which eliminated many of the less succesful innovations in the Leader, might have succeeded with fewer complications.
Perhaps i’m just too old and getting set in conventional ways…
Peter
Just in case anyone asks why I have not the least objection to the turn this thread has taken, first I happen to be interested in British steam, and more relevent, if war over immigration had not broken out in 1948, more modern British steam would certainly have been applied by the British-run “Palestine Railways.”
Nearly all the steam operated by Israel Railways up to dieselization was British.
Mike Macdonals emailed me the following photos with permision to post them;
The "Orient Express"at Gaza, 1930
Jerusalem 1918
Haifa - Kantera Express, 1930?
In Jerusalem 1930
Jerusalem Station, 1930
These locomotives are Baldwin, built in 1918.
Fifty of them were built numbered 871 to 920. The numbering is odd, since no other Palestine Railway locomotives had numbers over 100. They were known as class H and had 62" driving wheels and 19" x 26" cylinders.
Hughes (Middle East Railways) indicates that the line from Jaffa to Jerusalem was dismantled during the war, having been built originally to metre gauge and standard gauge was relaid in September 1920. The dual gauge is interesting, suggesting that both gauges might have been used together or in quick succession. But the likely date of the first photo must be late 1920 or later.
The second photo shows one of the later 1918 Baldwins. The locomotive behind it is the slightly larger P class 4-6-0, built by North British in 1935, which will help to date the photo. The P class is dramatically taller than the English LMS 8F 2-8-0s which arrived after service in Iran in 1948.
Peter
This view shows one of the five original metre gauge Baldwin 2-6-0s of the Jaffa to Jerusalem Railway, three built in 1890 and two in 1892. These had 43" driving wheels and 15" x 18" cylinders. They were numbered 1 to 5 and had names including “Jaffa” and “Jerusalem”. No 3 was the last survivor, and was rebuilt to 1050mm gauge and became No 18 on Palestine Railways narrow gauge list until 1930.
Peter
There were locomotives that preceded these two, that were used in constructing the line and providing some of the initial service. I think they were 0-6-0 tank locomotives, second-hand from the French attempt to construct the Panema Canal before USA involvement.
I appreciate all the data supplied on all these locomoitives. Here are a two pictures from the narrow gauge days at Jersulem:
Opening the line in 1892:
And here is a view from the period when the stationo was still in use before the cut-bach to the Malcha suburban station:
A few Kibbutzim and Moshavim had their own “narrow gauge railways” for collection of farm produce.