Posts Tagged ‘IRR’

Video shows Baghdad commuter trains

Friday, December 12th, 2008

All aboard… Baghdad’s train is a December 10 2008 NBC news video about the re-launch of commuter rail services in Baghdad.

With traffic in downtown Baghdad typically a snarled mess, the old commuter train has been re-introduced to combat commuter nightmares. Ride the train with NBC News’ Kianne Sadeq as it dodges goats, cars and weaves through Baghdad.

There are shots of Chinese and Turkish locos in action on the service, which was introduced at the end of October.

I found the video via Commuter trains return to Baghdad at the National Association of Railroad Passengers, who say

Hopefully the system will be successful in the long term and symbolize normalcy and stability for weary residents, as well as deliver benefits to commuters tired of facing the hazards and inconveniences of road travel in the region.

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US Marine Corps inspect IRR wagon

Thursday, December 11th, 2008



USMC. U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq.

Originally uploaded by ALFRED BENWAY

A photo on Flickr showing US Marine Corps security forces checking an Iraqi railway wagon on November 23 2008.


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Oil by rail in Iraq

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

Press release about transporting oil by rail from Bayji to Haqlaniyah in Iraq. The goal is to have two trains of 20 cars each per day.

Trains Deliver Crude Oil to Al-Anbar Refinery

Thursday, 16 October 2008
By Cpl. Sean Coolman, Regimental Combat Team 5

HAQLANIYAH – Trains delivering precious crude oil continue to arrive here despite harsh conditions and obstacles.

Marines and Sailors with Civil Affairs Team 6, Detachment 1, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 5 are here to make sure the trains are running at full capacity and arriving at the train station without encountering any obstructions.

“We’re renovating the train station to have it operable so that trains can pass through and deliver crude oil to the offload station,” said Sgt. Nelson L. Neely Jr., 22, a machine gunner with CA Team 6, from Houston. “We go there and check on the project and see how the trains and tracks are doing.”

“We help manage the trains as they come in,” said Staff Sgt. Graham H. Webb, 26, team chief with CA Team 6, from Ripley, Tenn. “We work with the Iraqi Railroad to coordinate the movement of crude oil from Bayji to Haqlaniyah.”

The CA team has spent approximately $450,000 of Commanders Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds thus far on improvements on the railroad itself and railroad station, which supplies the refinery here with crude oil to be processed. The goal is to have two trains of 20 cars each per day, which should support the refinery here and produce 16,000 barrels a day.

“When they bring the trains in, the crude oil gets sent to the refinery and then distributed all around al-Anbar province,” said Webb. “Access to fuel by the people lowers fuel prices and helps the economy in al-Anbar province.”

An issue the railroad has encountered is frequent sand drifts, which can cover portions of the railroad and affect the number and regularity of incoming trains.

“The refinery here depends on the train station to get the oil,” said Webb. “We paid a contractor who uses a bulldozer to manually clear the tracks, and we also gave money to the train station to build a blower to mount on the front of the trains.”

Plans are also in the works for future improvements on an existing oil pipeline to bring in additional oil.

“There are plans to repair (an existing) pipeline (that would) bring in additional crude oil to the area,” said Webb.

On a recent visit to the train station by CA Team 6, Kahlid Kamil Hussni, an Iraqi contractor in charge of clearing the railroad tracks at the Haqlaniyah train station spoke warmly of the Coalition force members here.

“If it wasn’t for (CA Team 6) and the Americans, this project would never have happened,” said Hussni.
Source: Multi-National Force Iraq

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Iraqi railways video

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

Alive in Baghdad employs Iraqi journalists to produce video packages each week about a variety of topics on daily life in Iraq, and this week has a short video on Iraq’s railways, subtitled in English. Through the work of a team of Americans and Iraqi correspondents on the ground, Alive in Baghdad shows the conflict through the voices of Iraqis.

The video includes footage of Dalian diesel locomotives in action in Baghdad, and a still picture of a British-built 8F steam loco.

100 Years Later, Iraq Railroad Still Runs

VIDEO – Iraq, Baghdad – The railroad in Iraq has a long history of wars and occupations, in the 1920s the railroads tracks were used by the British forces for transporting military supplies from London to Baghdad during the British occupation and it was well known with the name “Orient Express”

The greatest era of the Iraqi railway was during the 1970s. Iraq imported new trains at that time and developed a new international schedule, with trains leaving Baghdad heading to Damascus, London, Berlin, Paris and other destinations in Europe. Iraqis and people all over the world used to dream of the chance to take a trip in the famous “Orient Express.”

…

Now the Iraqi Republic Railways company is trying to fix the trains and is working on improving the old Orient Express, hoping the railroads will be modernized and good enough for passengers to use regularly in the near future.

This week our correspondent Nabeel Kamal visited the Iraqi Republic Railways company in Baghdad to see how the progress is going with this old company that is in fact older than Iraq itself.

Source: Alive in Baghdad 24 November 2008

Railway poster

The Orient Express in its many forms didn’t actually go to Baghdad, but only as far east as Istanbul, where passengers had to cross the Bosporus by boat – though a tunnel is now being built.

Sadly the Orient Express is now reduced to running from Strasbourg to Vienna and back; the Man in Seat 61 explains all.

The book The 8:55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames provides a more recent perspective on the journey from London to Baghdad. Agatha [Christie] used just two trains, the Orient Express and the Taurus Express, and then took what was effectively a taxi across 400 miles of desert from Damascus to Baghdad. Although both the OE and the TE still exist, they are nothing like what they used to be, so I had to string together a total of eight trains to do the same trip. And then join a coach of very unlikely characters to cross the desert into Iraq, in the last months before war broke out.

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Baghdad’s commuter train is beautiful but slow

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

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.”

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