Engine “Abdul Hamid” on the Mecca Railroad; Source: National Geographic Magazine XX(2):158, 1909

[A few years before World War I, when the Ottoman empire was still an empire, the Sultan Abdul Hamid sponsored a railway link between Damascus and Mecca for the pilgrim route. Although the Hijaz Railway is little known today, it has already merited a Wikipedia article. The following is from a report published a century ago on the opening of the railway. Webshaykh.]

The gauge of the line is the somewhat curious one of 1.05 meter (3 feet 5 1/4 inches), which was necessary, when the line was first commenced, to correspond with the gauge of the Beirut-Damascus line, over which the rolling stock had to be brought. The branch to the Mediterranean, at Haifa, was constructed subsequently. The rolling stock has been obtained principally from Belgium, with the exception of the engines, which are made by a German firm. The rails were supplied by the American Steel Trust, but a French firm domiciled in Russia, and by the firm of Cockerill, in Belgium.

The engineers in charge of sections were also of various nationalities — French, Poles, Hungarians, etc. — while the guiding spirit in the construction has been Meissner Pasha, a very able German engineer. But besides these the general direction has been under Marshal Kiazim Pasha, to whom the greatest credit is due in bringing the line successfully into Medina, and to Hajj Mukhtar Bey, a brilliant Turkish engineer, who has absorbed all modern methods of construction, and compelted the last section into Medina without European assistance.

Religious scholars in Madina welcoming the first train from Damascus; Source: National Geographic Magazine XX(2):170, 1909

In conclusion, it is difficult which to admire the most, this far-reaching conception of His Majesty the Sultan — to build the line and thus to further the interests of his religion and bind together the outlying portions of his empire — or the silent, unswerving devotion of the Turkish soldier who has carried the matter to a conclusion, and who watches without complaint over miles of line through a country almost without water or inhabitants.

Excerpt from Colonel F. R. Maunsell, “One Thousand Miles of Railway Built for Pilgrims and Not for Dividends,” National Geographic Magazine XX(2):171-172, 1909.