AndrewGrantham.co.uk

The Phantasrail website has been updated with some new photos of freight operations on the Aqaba Railway in Jordan.

Aqaba Railway Corp’s 300 km freight-only system carries phosphate ore from the mines to the port at Aqaba. There are approximately seven train loads from the mines to docks each day.

A news story from last Friday (June 13) was that a Bahrain-based investor has bought UK-based freight operator Freightliner.

Which indirectly raises the question of whether there are any railways in Bahrain? As far as I know there aren’t, but rather bizarrely thay have an ex-British Rail Mark I coach in use as a restaurant!

According to the Southern Electric Group, buffet car 69338 from 4Big unit 2206/7054 is the station restaurant for the Gulf Corporation in Bahrain.

Photos by David Kelso, March 2003

What the future holds, an article by Munawar Shariff of LOG Middle East about railway plans for the region.

This week a Kuwaiti official has described plans for a 165 km, four-line metro to be built within six years. Perhaps now Dubai has one almost finished, everyone wants one?

Not only that, but there will be a 505.5 km rail system, eventually linking Saudi Arabia with Iraq, presumably somewhere near Basra. And it might even have links on to Iran, as well.

There have been rumours in the past of proposals for a railway to get supplies from the docks to US bases in Kuwait, taking lots of lorries off the emirate’s roads.

Test running on the Dubai Metro has started in the past few days, inspiring a publication called PMV to look at the previous railways of Dubai.

The article, dated May 13 2008, is called Dubai’s first ‘metro’ and is based on my Railways in the United Arab Emirates page.

Most of the details were supplied to me by Eljas Pölhö and Thomas Kautzor (who also took the pictures), and so they deserve a credit.

Rainer Fuchs has been for a ride on a train - of sorts - in Abu Dhabi. It is a rubber wheeled
train, used to transport tourists around the artificial Lulu Island.

The April 2008 issue of Railway Gazette International has a long feature on the Dubai metro by Dominic Ellis, detailing the construction of what will be the world’s longest driverless metro. Read it here (but without the pretty pictures which you get in the magazine).

Railways Africa reports that a 15km line between Khorramshahr and Shalamcheh is nearing completion

Monday, 07 January 2008
According to an Iraqi transportation ministry announcement, the Baghdad government “’strongly supports” the implementation of a proposed rail project linking Iran and Iraq.

The Al-Alam TV network quoted Iraq Railways Javad Al-Khorrasan saying: “During the first phase of the project, a railway will cross from Basra and head to Iran via Shalamcheh.”

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In terms of a second plan, a line is envisaged from Baghdad via the north west of Iraq to Monzariyah and thence into Iran.
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