Does the Railroad in Iraq connect to anywere outside the country.

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.

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

Iron Nipple wrote:

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.

Turkish Rail Map 

Victrola1 wrote:

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.

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

  http://www.ajg41.clara.co.uk/iraqrailways.html

Victrola1 wrote:

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.

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?

Victrola1 wrote:

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.

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.  

Iron Nipple wrote:

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

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.

http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=baghdad&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=36.804826,42.071875&spn=0.006314,0.014784&t=h&om=1&iwloc=addr

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 border between Syria and Turkey; the concertina wire is about one meter south of the ballast shoulder, and the entire line from Nusaybin to Karkamis lies within a militarized zone heavily guarded by Turkish troops.  The Syrian side has no discernible military presence and it appears that once one gained passage through the Turkish side one could walk to the nearest town unmolested, hail a taxi, and find a nice hotel and dinner in Aleppo with no one in Syria caring a whit.  In some stretches the Turkish border fence swings several kilometers north of the railway and in those area Syrian villagers cross the track to graze their sheep between the railway and the fence, and farm their wheat right to the edge of the ballast shoulder on the south side of the railway.  The border between Turkey and Syria is an artifact of war and empire, and splits ancient towns in two, with families divided between the countries.  In some of the towns there is a gate where people can walk to the other side, and the Turkish soldiers told me that the common practice is to allow people to freely visit their family on the other side so long as they're back by nightfall.

There was a meter-gauge connection to Iran in the 1930s via a wood trestle over the Shatt-al-Arab near Basra.  I'm not sure if it connected to anything in Iran, however.  Iraq and Iran have engineered a design for a new connection between Basra and Khoramshar but to my knowledge neither government has committed toward the $150 million in funds required.  There is also a partially built connection between Dair Es Zoar, Syria, and Husabya, Iraq, on which work began in the 1990s and ceased prior to the war.  About 120 km through open desert and a large bridge over the Euphrates River are required to complete this link.  There are paper designs for links to Iran at several locations in the north, and to Kuwait and the Gulf states in the south, as well as almost every other two points on the Middle East map which a pencil line can connect.

The IRR's best year ever in terms of freight ton-miles (about 1.7 billion) and passenger-miles was the year immediately prior to the Coalition invasion, 2002.  Its worst year to date is this year, with maybe 180,000 ton-miles, one one-hundredth of one percent of what the railway did under the Saddam Hussein regime.

There are no bridges down between Baghdad and Basra -- if one sees something like that on Google Earth one is misinterpreting the imagery.  There was a small simple-span bridge (7 meters) at the town of Latafiya, about 50 km south of Baghdad Central Station, that was regularly blown up by unhappy locals until the railroad replaced it with culverts.  However, the Bayji-Kirkuk line is severed by a dropped span of the high Al-Fat'ah Bridge (dropped by U.S. ordinance in 2003) and subsequent severe damage to several piers from major crude oil fires following sabotage and/or corrosion failures in the adjacent multiple-loop crude pipeline from Kirkuk to Bayji.  The U.S. House of Representatives specifically lined-out the $3 million initially requested by my predecessor in Iraq to repair the ordnance damage to the bridge for reasons never explained.  Subsequent fire damage may be in the order of magnitude of $50 million. 

The railway was otherwise little damaged by the invasion itself though seriously rundown, especially rolling stock and the north-south line from years of sanctions and war that denied spare parts and economic viability to the country's infrastructure.  The Baghdad Yard itself was not torn up though some ordinance came through the roof of the "French" locomotive shed at Shalchiya Shops, doing very little damage other than putting some holes in the roof.  I can see how someone might think that because most of the track at North Yard and Shalchiya Shops isn't in very good repair, though it is useable. 

The primary damage to the railway was looting in the days immediately following the fall of Baghdad, which caused about $1 billion damage to the rolling stock and fixed plant.  Most  structures were reduced to masonry shells minus doors, windows, plumbing, electrical, and interior furnishings.  In some cases the structures were demolished to salvage the bricks.  Most of the passenger car fleet and one-third of the locomotive fleet was looted of copper and other non-ferrous metals, as well as seats, glazing, and anything else that had value.  Freight cars at isolated locations were looted of bearings or journal brass and non-ferrous metals, and in some cases the sides were cut out for the sheet steel.  Rail was stolen from side tracks to use as reinforcing material in the flat concrete roofs that abound in Middle Eastern residential and commercial construction.  About 100 km of Pandrol clips were stolen and according to the IRR are now in inventory on the Iranian Railway system.  The signaling system including the CTC on the new Western lines was looted of copper.  Tools, furniture, and spares were looted to bare shelves.  (An anecdote.  At a meeting in Falluja last year a USACE engineer asked the IRR division engineer if he could make copies of the blueprints of the Falluja station for their use in restoring the station from the damage inflicted during the 2004 invasion of Falluja and subsequent Coalition Forces (CF) conversion to a FOB (Forward Operating Base).  He replied that the IRR no longer had a blueprint machine, "It is now in the market."  "Yes, it's been privatized," said another IRR officer.  Most of the U.S. people in the room didn't have any idea why the Iraqis thought this was funny.)

Approximately one-third of the railway has been occupied by U.S. troops since 2002, the third that lies primarily in Anbar province.  This is all new railroad of first-class engineering and construction standards, lavishly equipped with yards, shops, stations, and CTC.  The CF staff views railway shops, stations, and yards as convenient FOBs with large buildings in which to house troops and maintain vehicles.  The large, flat expanse of railyards which is de facto unused by local civilians lends itself most satisfactorily to providing force protection to CF soldiers and troops.  The CF sees its first mission is to enforce order, then later to restart the economy. 

It's a chicken-and-egg problem of the first order.  Should you get the economy running so people can feed their family and thus not turn to crime or be subject to political unrest?  But before people will go to work they need to know that their family is safe.  To make the family safe you need to provide security.  To provide security, you have to know who is going where and why, and that makes it impractical to allow free passage of goods and people.  Free passage of goods and people are necessary to a functioning economy.  So to provide security you have to stop the economy, and to create an environment in which security measures will be effective you have to start the economy.  It's a conundrum of colossal proportions. 

The railway thus cannot operate this portion of the system, nor serve the shippers -- a number of large industrial plants that provide the backbone of the economy in western Iraq -- and thus the economy in western Iraq is reduced to what the Iraqis term "flower merchants and crime."  Most of the remainder of the railway is essentially inoperable as a system due to no security for the railway employees, who are concerned they will be shot if they attempt to run trains.  It's not possible to tell exactly who is doing the shooting, but in general it's agreed that the anti-railway forces are part political, part criminal, generally local, and their motivation and goals are fluid.  At least 50 railway employees have died to date in the effort to run trains and maintain track.  

Significant damage to the railway since the initial looting has continued, most of it caused by Coalition Forces, partly in their on-going effort to defeat various anti-central-government factions, and partly for military expedience, e.g., cutting through the track and railway embankment to create supply and patrol routes.  Much of the telecommunication equipment and defensive weapons provided to the railway by one hand of the U.S. Government has been impounded, seized, or destroyed by the other hand of the U.S. Government, who reasonably conclude that any communications equipment or weapons that isn't in the possession of the CF can be used against the CF.  On the other hand several running trains have been shot up by CF weapons for unknown reasons.   The only electronic interlocking machine to survive the looting, at Al Qaim, was destroyed sometime in 2004 along with most of the depot ceilings, walls, doors, windows, etc., by U.S. Army Special Forces who had converted the building to their unit's training facility.  The interlocking wiring diagrams were pulled off the shelves and burned, and the large electronic control console was destroyed.  That was the only time I thought I was going to see an IRR railway officer cry, but they are tough and have to live in the midst of complete disaster on the good days.  Next to the decimation of their friends and family the loss of another piece of the operating railway seems small.

Approximately $225 million in U.S. funds has been spent or obligated to the effort to restore the IRR to service.  The big chunk was $200 million from the $18.3 billion IRRF fund, In rough terms, my predecessor and I obligated this as follows: $60 million went to a bare-bones renovation of stations and shops rendered useless by looting (several restored stations have unfortunately subsequently been flattened by aerial ordinance).  $30 million went to purchase spare parts for locomotives, wagons, and track, and new intermodal equipment.  $30 million went to purchase track-maintenance machinery (tampers, ballast regulators, sleeper exchangers, flash-butt welding trucks and hydraulic rail pullers, ganger trolleys, etc.)  $60 million went to purchase a train-control system and digital microwave radio network.  USAID provided $25 million to lay a replacement main track from the Port of Umm Qasr to Shoaiba Junction, near Basra.  My predecessor obtained about $50 million (more or less) from Syria and Turkey not paid to Iraq prior to the war for oil purchases, which went to purchase 240 tank wagons for gasoil, fuel oil, and benzene, 12 1500-hp Turkish shunters, 12 power-luggage vans, and some remanufactured EMD 12-645E3 and Alco 16-251 prime movers and main generators.  The CF has probably provided about $5-8 million in miscellaneous CERP (Commander's Emergency Relief Program) funds for various things.  A couple of million more from here and there bought radios, etc.  We also obtained this and that in the way of surplus things from various sources.  My successor has done much with little as the money has dried up.

The railway is standard-gauge and thus compatible with most of the world's railways.  As illustration, the 120 articulated intermodal flats purchased for the IRR by the U.S. Government under the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, which were built in Poland, moved all-rail to Iraq, including by carferry across the Bosporus.  The IRR uses SA-3 type couplers (Russian standard, very similar to a U.S. coupler).  Because the CFS and TCDD use screw couplings and buffers, IRR locomotives, passenger wagons, and freight wagons are equipped with buffers to enable freight interchange, and the screw coupling can be inserted into the coupler.  If you look at a photo of an IRR locomotive or wagon you can sometimes see the screw coupling hanging down out of the way.   Jordan's Hedjaz Jordan and Aqaba Railways are 1.050 meter gauge.  The Hedjaz continues to Damascus as 1.050 m gauge, but the rest of CFS is standard gauge.

The IRR construction history is fairly complex and a reasonably detailed accounting runs to about 5,000 words.  The major elements are as follows.  A French-British plan to connect Istanbul to Baghdad gave way to a German concession to connect Istanbul to Baghdad as Germany and the Ottoman Empire grew friendly.  Construction began in 1890 at Konya, Turkey.  Large portions were completed prior to World War I.  After the lengthy interruption of the Great War, dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the subsequent assembly of an independent Turkey by Ataturk, the route was completed to Baghdad on 17 July 1940 under a British concession.  Meter-gauge and some 2'-6" lines connected Baghdad to Basra, and Baghdad to Kirkuk and Erbil.  The Baghdad-Basra line was rebuilt to standard-gauge on a mostly new alignment in the late 1950s under the aegis of the USSR.  What was left of the meter-gauge lines vanished by the 1970s.  The western extension from Baghdad to Al Qaim and Akashat was built circa 1980 time period by Mendes Brothers, a Brazilian contractor, and the Haqlaniya-Bayji-Kirkuk line was completed in the mid-1980s by Hyundai. 

As an aside, it's been my experience that all railwaymen belong to a culture apart from the common person that transcends geographic, political, religious, racial, and gender boundaries.  It was obvious to me in about one week that the IRR railwaymen were railwaymen first, Iraqis second, and whatever sect/religion/race they happened to be about 10th or 11th down on the list, well after railway departmental loyalties.  (And the Syrian and Turkish railwaymen I worked with were the same, railroaders to the bone.)   I do not know if railways and their unique requirements take ordinary people and mold them into the railway culture, or if people who were born to be railwaymen self-select themselves into the culture.  But the Iraqi railwaymen are the best I've ever met.  It was an honor for me to work for them.

M.W. Hemphill

traildoctor wrote:

Near Al Latafiyah 32.998675   44.370281 bridge was out when the shots were taken, you can see the equipment repairing the track.   12 kilometers N of As Somawah there is work on the main line and a short bypass line around the constrution.  31.425411  45.250622  It looks like a new culvert.

The first location is the infamous Latafiya canal where the photo coincidentally happens to be taken during the week while the new box culvert was being installed.

The second location is a line change that's under construction, not a "bridge out."  Most of the railroad between Baghdad and Shoaiba Junction is in various stages of line changes to reduce curvature, dating to before the war.

(Place name spellings on Google often use antique and stilted translations.  It's Latafiya and Samawa.  The "As" and "Al" prefix often seen on U.S. and particularly British maps are not commonly used in Iraqi practice except for a few places such as Al Qaim, and the "h" on the end of many place names is a British artifact that the Iraqis rarely use.  "Al" means "the.")

M.W. Hemphill

Mark

Thank you for the information, and thank you for your service to the USA and Iraq.

    So can a passenger travel to Bagdad from Turkey by a train or intercity bus and or a combonation of both?