Hejaz: the grand old railway that time forgot

An aging diesel locomotive transporting wagons of phosphate across a dusty old narrow-gauge track does not really evoke the image of a grand old railway. Certainly not one that was designed – back in the late 19th century – with a view to bringing Arabian provinces closer to the bossom of the Ottoman state. And yet that is what the final years of the Hejaz railway looked like: a branch line between phosphate mines and the port city of Aqaba in Jordan, now too abandoned.