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Railway lines once connected the Middle East

economist.com

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Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#51

Post by pjc50 »

beebeepka wrote: post #43

What a sad, sad read. Kind of makes my blood boil, too. We've barely started but half the comments are already grey. As a side note: anyone else wonder why the English speaking world refers to the region as "the middle East"? To me it is the near East. Not just because of proximity but I've never heard or read about a near East from anglo sources. What is the rationale?

By contrast with the "far east", which is everywhere east of India. I think if someone said "near east" I'd interpret it as roughly the Balkans: Vienna to the Bosporous. No longer as politically important a region.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#52

Post by kmlx »

beebeepka wrote: post #43

What a sad, sad read. Kind of makes my blood boil, too. We've barely started but half the comments are already grey. As a side note: anyone else wonder why the English speaking world refers to the region as "the middle East"? To me it is the near East. Not just because of proximity but I've never heard or read about a near East from anglo sources. What is the rationale?

here you go:

> The origin of the term "Middle East" is considered to be in the British India Office during the 1850s. It was popularized by Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval strategist who was referring to the region between Arabia and India in 1902. Mahan’s definition of the Middle East was the area around the Persian Gulf. Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol further enlarged this definition to cater for the Asian regions whose territories extended to India.

> Prior to the Second World War, another term, the "Near East", denoted the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in addition to regions centered around Turkey. Middle East was used by the British while naming its command in Egypt in the late 1930s. It was after this usage that the term became widely used in the West. In 1946, the Middle East Institute began operating in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#53

Post by pjc50 »

photochemsyn wrote: post #24

Some historians point to the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway (barely mentioned in the article) as playing a primary role in the outbreak of World War I. The naval forces of Britain had made the decision to switch from coal to oil, and that mean Britain would have a more maneuverable and faster fleet than Germany - so Germany followed suit. Unlike British sea access to Persian oil at the time, the only German option was tra…

Yes - and a similar story plays out in WW2, as Germany still didn't have any domestic oil. Hence the push east towards the oilfields of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, halted at the Volga (Stalingrad) and the Terek river/Caucasus mountains.

I should get round to reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize:_The_Epic_Quest_for_...

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#54

Post by presentation »

pjmlp wrote: post #47
Gigachad wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still get to have your car, it just means you can't drive it right through the middle of a dense living area, you'll have to park on the edge and walk/tram/scooter in. Which is the best for everyone.

Except for those in a condition not to easily walk or use any kind of two wheels device. Then there is the whole issue that local city transportation is pretty lousy, even in Europe. Sure big cities have it good on the innermost district, live a bit more on the outskirts or in a smaller town and taxi becomes the only option for those not willing to wait between 1-2h for each bus into each direction plus additional co…

Blind, wheelchair-bound, and elderly people use trains daily everywhere in Tokyo. It only sucks if your city doesn’t value the non-able-bodied (which unfortunately is most of the world).

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#55

Post by inglor »

inglor_cz wrote: post #40
shimonamit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, at least in Israel. The Jerusalem-Beit Shemesh route was restored and it is a beautiful commute.

I found a video of its stunning beauty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_urfQTLk_g The author says that the line closed in March 2020, but maybe it has since been reopened?

We have the same alias :O

Anyway, live close by.

The train station at Malha was closed 2020 because of COVID because it was a scenic/tourist route. There was discussion of shutting it down permanently but it didn't happen. I used to take it every week for a coding-teaching gig 5 years ago.

It will likely either reopen when tourism reaches a pre-covid level in a year or two or will be converted to a light-rail station.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#56

Post by inglor_cz »

inglor wrote: post #55
inglor_cz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found a video of its stunning beauty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_urfQTLk_g The author says that the line closed in March 2020, but maybe it has since been reopened?

We have the same alias :O Anyway, live close by. The train station at Malha was closed 2020 because of COVID because it was a scenic/tourist route. There was discussion of shutting it down permanently but it didn't happen. I used to take it every week for a coding-teaching gig 5 years ago. It will likely either reopen when tourism reaches a pre-covid level in a year or two or will be converted to a light-rail station…

Wow, never before have I met anyone with the same nick online. I have been carrying the Elvish name around since approx. 1995, when I was a young Tolkien fanboy.

This railway is on my visit list. I hope that tourism recovers enough for it to reopen.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#57

Post by fmajid »

solatic wrote: post #19

At least in Israel, many of the old lines, even if they still operated today, would have been long obsolete. A daily train leaving Haifa at 8:30 and reaching Jaffa by lunch? Three, four hours? The same line today makes the journey in an hour, and there are plans on the table to build additional tracks to cut that down to a half hour. People commute from Haifa to Tel Aviv, with three (soon four) tracks passing through…

It’s quite amazing there wasn’t a proper rail line connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem until very recently. Certainly the very mountainous terrain around Jerusalem makes it difficult but the Swiss have managed.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#58

Post by fredley »

rendall wrote: post #20

This article made me think about how the presence of trains indicate peace. Trains are so vulnerable to attack. Their existence depends on everyone with access to the tracks to trust and agree with their purpose. I suspect if we're mourning these trains, we also mourn the loss of peace and stability in the region. As an aside, TIL that there are actually two Tripolis, one in Libya and the other in Lebanon. I have hea…

There are trains between Moscow / Beijing and Pyongyang, which is interesting I think.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#59

Post by trhway »

rendall wrote: post #20

This article made me think about how the presence of trains indicate peace. Trains are so vulnerable to attack. Their existence depends on everyone with access to the tracks to trust and agree with their purpose. I suspect if we're mourning these trains, we also mourn the loss of peace and stability in the region. As an aside, TIL that there are actually two Tripolis, one in Libya and the other in Lebanon. I have hea…

not only peace. Given the investment and maintenance required, trains require some degree of social/economic connectedness between places it connects. For example, the fall of USSR resulted in many train routes disappearing, and in the recent years Russia/Ukraine transport connections naturally got hit.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#60

Post by dustintrex »

fredley wrote: post #58
rendall wrote: post #20

This article made me think about how the presence of trains indicate peace. Trains are so vulnerable to attack. Their existence depends on everyone with access to the tracks to trust and agree with their purpose. I suspect if we're mourning these trains, we also mourn the loss of peace and stability in the region. As an aside, TIL that there are actually two Tripolis, one in Libya and the other in Lebanon. I have hea…

There are trains between Moscow / Beijing and Pyongyang, which is interesting I think.

There is also a train line between Seoul and Pyongyang, which unsurprisingly is virtually never used.
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