Eastern Railway (Israel)

The Eastern Railway (Hebrew: המסילה המזרחית‎‎) refers to a railroad in central Israel stretching from Lod to Hadera. As of 2016, the section between Kfar Saba and Lod, as well as a short section just north of Hadera are in use, while the rest of the railway has not been operative since 1969, though there are plans to rebuild and upgrade the railway along the entire route.

The railway was constructed by the Ottoman authorities in Palestine during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I, to assist them with moving men and material in the war effort. It connected Tulkarm (where it connected to a branch line of the Jezreel Valley Railway, and through it to the greater Hejaz Railway) and Lod, where it connected to the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway and the Railway to Beersheba. An extension northwards from Tulkarm to Hadera was also built in order to supply the railway with timber collected from the forests around Hadera that was used as fuel and for infrastructure. The line was built as narrow gauge (1050 mm) like the rest of the Ottoman railways in the region and was situated relatively inland to avoid the reach of naval guns from Royal Navy warships patrolling the Mediterranean coast.

After the British conquered the area, they converted the railway to standard gauge and extended it from Hadera north to the port city of Haifa. It then became the main north-south rail link in the British Mandate of Palestine and was operated by Palestine Railways. While the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway was also converted to standard gauge at the same time, the Jezreel Valley Railway was not and therefore it was no longer possible for trains using the Eastern Railway to travel to sections of the Hejaz Railway due to the gauge break. During the Mandate period, stations on the Eastern Railway operated in Hadera, Qaqun, Tulkarm, Qalqilyah, Rosh HaAyin, Rantiya, Kafr Jinis, and Lod (then called Lydda). In the later stages of World War II and for a short time thereafter, the Eastern Railway was one link in a larger contiguous standard gauge rail network that allowed trains to travel all the way from Anatolia to southern Egypt.

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Wikipedia