Rakevet HaEmek

One damp, slightly rainy Friday (the first rain of autumn), Yonatan and I explored some of the western stations of the almost-mythological Rakevet HaEmek (Valley Line, or Jezreel Valley Line, רכבת העמק, خط سكك حديد مرج بن عامر) of the former Hejaz Railway. The Hejazi Railway ran from Damascus to Medina in the Arabian Peninsula, and the Valley Line was built at the beginning of the 20th century as a branch line connecting the main line at at Dera'a with the Port of Haifa.

As early as the 1860s, several Europeans―including the deputy British consul in Haifa, Thomas B. Sandwit, Dr Charles Franz Zimfel, a German-American doctor and engineer, Claude Conder, explorer and surveyor for the Palestine Exploration Fund, and Laurence Oliphant―had proposed a railway through the Jezreel valley as part of various schemes, and Conder's plans constituted the basis for the actual construction years later. Oliphant went as far as purchasing land and seeking funding, but the plans―which had the support of the British government―fell through: at the end of 1884, the Ottoman permit expired, and the 50,000 francs deposited by Oliphant's company to Sultan Abdul Hamid II was forfeit.

In 1890, the Ottoman authorities gave a permit to build a railway line from Haifa to Damascus to two of its public servants, Shukri Bey, and a Christian Lebanese engineer and effendi named Yusuf Elias. Elias did not have the ability to gather the necessary funds but bought out Shukri and sold the rights to British entrepreneur, John Robert Pilling, who established the Syria Ottoman Railway Limited. On December 12, 1892, the contractor George Pauling started work on the line. But work was slow, and hampered by competition from the French whose Chémin de Fer Damas–Hama et Prolongements company sought and won a contract from the Ottomans for a line from Beirut to the Hauran via Damascus, which they finished very quickly by 1895. Due to the competition from this new French railway, the port of Haifa became less attractive to international traders and Pilling went bankrupt and lost the permit for the railway. The construction permits were given to another British contractor, Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, and another ceremony was held announcing the resumption of works in March 1895.

However, in 1900, the Ottomans began building the Hejaz railway, and saw the opportunity to convert the Haifa–Damascus line to a branch line of it. In the meantime the Ottoman authorities got into disputes with the French Chémin de Fer Damas–Hama et Prolongements and now wanted to have their own railway line to the Mediterranean to transport goods inland and, in 1902, the Ottoman authorities revoked the permit to the British for compensation of 155,000 Turkish lira. The German engineer, Heinrich August Meissner, who oversaw the construction of the Hejaz railway from Damascus to Dara'a, realizing that it was still very difficult to transport raw materials from the Medierranean to Dara'a for the construction of the rest of the line, chose Haifa for its already developed port, and because surveying, planning and some construction work for a railroad had already been done on the proposed route. Thus in 1903, track laying began between Haifa and Dara'a, using the Ottoman standard narrow gauge (3 ft 5 11⁄32 in). The line was finally opened with five stations in January 1904, between Haifa and Beysan (Beit She'an) and, on October 15, 1905, the entire Haifa–Dara'a section opened, with eight stations within Ottoman Palestine.

A 1915 photograph (on display at Elro'i Halt) of passengers on the Hejaz Railway.

Regular passenger services ran on the Valley Line until 1948. The steam trains travelled through the Jezreel valley at roughly 25 kilometres an hour―slow enough for passengers to call out news to farmers working the fields along the railway tracks and to pick up local gossip en route to their destination. Old-time moshavniks apparently still tell stories of how news of a birth, marriage or death in another corner of the valley would be announced with a shout through an open window as the train made its way through from Tzemach to Haifa.

A new standard gauge line―following nearly the same route from Haifa to Beit She'an―was constructed by Israel Railways from 2011, opening to passengers in 2016.

The Hejaz Railway in 1914 [Credit: User:Attilios, User:Degeefe - This file was derived from: Ferrocarril del hiyaz.png, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34397286]

The western terminus was at Haifa East, a station no longer in use for passengers, whose buildings are nevertheless preserved―part offices, part home to the National Railway Museum.

At the opening ceremony, when the first train left Haifa for Damascus, a monument for Abdul Hamid II marking the occasion―with a long inscription in Turkish and Arabic, and a relief of a train―was unveiled , which stands to this day at Haifa East Railway Station. The monument was brought by sea from Turkey.

According to this old photo (displayed at Elro'i Halt) the monument was in place in 1903.

Haifa East Railway Station

I took the photos of Haifa East back in 2015, but on this occasion we visited the station at Kfar Yehoshua―which has been restored and made into a museum which, unfortunately, was just closing―and nearby at Kiryat Haroshet and Elro’i. The last two were simple halts, but have nevertheless been restored by local residents and made into simple but fascinating local attractions. We also found old stretches of the railway in the undergrowth. You can enjoy some pictures below.

Kfar Yehoshua Station

Clockwise from top left: Kfar Yehoshua Station; British-cast bogeys; Kfar Yehoshua water tower; old cattle wagons at Kfar Yehoshua.

Left: Kiryat Haroshet Halt; right: Yonatan aboard a train built for a film set in the 1960s, which was rescued from obscurity in an Ashdod warehouse and placed proudly alongside the tiny station building, surrounded by a park and play area for children.

Left: a free library at Kiryat Haroshet Halt; right: the iron sleepers have the year of manufacture in the casting. The railway had mostly iron sleepers, since the engineers believed that the local Arabs would otherwise remove the (wooden) sleepers for firewood.