Railways of Iraq

In the 29 December 2008 story In Baghdad, a Trip to Nowhere Washington Post Staff Photographer Andrea Bruce takes a ride on the Baghdad commuter train.

At 5:30 a.m., everything is dark at the Baghdad Central Station. There are no passengers about, and most of the gates are still locked. The morning train, the only working train, leaves the station with a deep, heavy rhythm that vibrates through the six passenger cars. Only the engine has electricity. There are no lights.

A Baghdad commute is a collection of some quite artistic photos Bruce took of the trip – it’s not everywhere people skin sheep alongside comuuter lines.

Newsweek has a 19 December 2008 report A Railway’s Painful Rebirth by Jessica Ramirez.

There is another video of the Baghdad commuter service – including cab views, Chinese and Turkish built locos, sheep, and motorists with a cavalier attitude to level crossing safety.

… Iraq’s railways, which came to a halt during the war, have reopened two lines in the last two months. There is now a Friday train to Samarra and a commuter train, Baghdad’s first, which makes two round trips a day between the Central Baghdad Station and the District of Dora. Railway workers consider these the first signs of progress for an industry trying to recover from the looting, murders and bombings that ravaged it after the U.S-led invasion. In a larger sense, they also reflect the long-term impact of conflict and the struggle to get a country back on track.

All aboard the Baghdad Metro is an article by Tina Susman and Caesar Ahmed on the Los Angeles Times website.

Dated November 18 2008, it describes the recently introduced Iraqi Republic Railways commuter service in Baghdad, with a simple map.

Despite the story’s title, it is about an Iraqi Republic Railways “mainline” rail service, not a “metro” as such. A metro was proposed for Baghdad in the past, but not built.

“If this succeeds, I think they’ll open more lines inside Baghdad,” says Thafir Salim, the engineer [train driver] on the route, which leaves the main station and weaves about 15 miles through west and south Baghdad on just two round-trip journeys a day: one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

There are six photos. Some show a Dalian DEM 2700 mainline locomotive, which seem to appear in most of the photos of IRR which I’ve seen, but some of the LA Times pictures seem to show a Tülomsas Bo-Bo diesel-hydraulic loco.

“It’s beautiful, but it’s slow,” says Mohammed Ali, a Baghdad University student who normally takes the taxi from his Dora home to school. But the first-time rider says he will keep taking it. “I think it’s more secure than the taxis,” he says. “What’s good here is there are no checkpoints, no traffic, no explosions.”