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From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Railroads in Iraq
Message-ID: <1991Jan22.020646.21418@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 22 Jan 91 02:06:46 GMT
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From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader)
[Cc to sci.military in case nobody comes up with more current information.]

My world atlas (printed in 1979) shows a railway line from the head of
the Persian Gulf running through Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey to the
Mediterranean.  It follows a fairly straight route from Basra through
Baghdad to Mosul and across the northeast corner of Jordan; then it
runs along the Turkish side of the Turkey-Jordan border for some
distance, and then turns south to a point near Halab, Jordan.

>From there, one branch goes south through Halab and divides to
reach Tartus on the coast and various points in Lebanon including
Tripoli and Beirut -- I think I've heard that most or all of the railway
in Lebanon has been destroyed, though.

The other branch from the junction near Halab goes north and west,
and connects to the Turkish railway network at Osmaniye and Adana
(from which latter point, for instance, Kayseri and Ankara are reached
by a reasonably direct route).

Another line from Baghdad runs to Kirkuk and Irbil, with a short branch
to Khanaqin on the Iranian border.

There may be other connections that the atlas makers didn't think
worth showing.
-- 
Mark Brader	"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out
utzoo!sq!msb	 of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stagecoaches?"
msb@sq.com		 -- The Quarterly Review (England), March 1825