Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 22, 2010

The Baghdad Railway (Bağdat Demiryolu, Bagdadbahn), was built from 1903 to 1940 to connect Berlin with the (then) Ottoman Empire city of Baghdad with a 1600 km line through modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Funding and engineering was mainly provided by German Empire banks and companies, which in the 1890s had built the Anatolian Railway (Anatolische Eisenbahn) connecting Istanbul, Ankara and Konya. Completion of the Baghdad Railway was to connected Berlin and Baghdad, from where the Germans attempted to establish a port at the Persian Gulf. The Ottoman Empire desired to maintain its control of Arabia and to expand its influence across the Red Sea into Egypt, which was controlled by Great Britain. The Germans gained access to and ownership of oil fields in Iraq, and with a line to the port of Basra would have gained better access to the eastern parts of the German colonial empire, bypassing the Suez Canal. The railway became a source of international disputes during the years immediately preceding World War I. Although it has been argued that they were resolved in 1914 before the war began, it has also been argued that the railway was a leading cause of the First World War. Technical difficulties in the remote Taurus Mountains and diplomatic delays meant that by 1915 the railway was still 480 km short of completion, severely limiting its use during the war in which Baghdad was occupied by the British while the already completed Hejaz railway in the south was attacked by guerrilla forces led by T. E. Lawrence. Construction resumed in the 1930s and was completed in 1940.