Israel Railway developments

[cirdan]

Imagine living in a country with just 420 km of railways.. that's sad and depressing!

It is much more than they had 20 or 30 years ago.

Back then the passenger rail network was on its last legs, running very few routes (much less than now) and using ancient equipment that hobbled along at low speeds due to the decrepitude of the track. In Tel Aviv the downtown station was sold to a property developer and trains moved to a spartan and peripheral site nestled in a highway junction. And nobody really cared. Railways were not a word that ever got mentioned in politics. Buses were the way to go. The railroads main purpose was to move minerals from the inland mines to the ports. Any track not useful for that purpose was being left to rot.

Since then Israeli Railways have rediscovered the importance of passengers and undergone a huge transformation, reopening lost routes and building new ones. Israeli trains today are for the most part modern, clean and fast. And people are using them.

The big new project is connecting Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba with Tel Aviv and Jerusalem by constructing a line from Dimona to Eilat.

Is this still ongoing?
It has been "a project" for as long as I can remember, and my interest in Israeli Railways goes back more than 30 years.
Do you think there is a chance this could change?

The line has huge potential, especially for freight, as a means to by-pass the Suez canal, but also to serve Israel's own needs as more and more trade is going to or coming from China.

Maybe a little understanding of the size of the country would help. Is it really 420 km? Wikipedia says 949 km = 589 miles.

Maybe one figure is for the passenger network and the other for the total network. There are several rather long branches extending into uninhabited desert areas whose purpose is to serve the mines there, and never had and probably never will have any passenger service. I'm not familiar with that part.

Different versions of maps tend to disagree over the exact extent of these lines.

Wikipedia thinks the overall length of Israel Railways is 707 miles by the way, but I think this may be track and not routes.

 

[jis]

Is this still ongoing?
It has been "a project" for as long as I can remember, and my interest in Israeli Railways goes back more than 30 years.
Do you think there is a chance this could change?

The line has huge potential, especially for freight, as a means to by-pass the Suez canal, but also to serve Israel's own needs as more and more trade is going to or coming from China.

It is currently unfunded but there is an equivalent of an EIS for it. As for what will happen in the future, who knows? There is a reasonable article on it in Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_railway_to_Eilat

Maybe one figure is for the passenger network and the other for the total network. There are several rather long branches extending into uninhabited desert areas whose purpose is to serve the mines there, and never had and probably never will have any passenger service. I'm not familiar with that part.

Different versions of maps tend to disagree over the exact extent of these lines.

Wikipedia thinks the overall length of Israel Railways is 707 miles by the way, but I think this may be track and not routes.

This map below appears to be a more or less accurate depiction of the current state of affairs. It includes all abandoned lines too, but not lines that are under active construction, like the Eastern Railway between Caesarea and Rosh Ha'Ayin North. It does not show any planned lines either.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...vg/800px-Israeli-Palestinian_Railways.svg.png
Incidentally there is a plan to extend the line to Beit She'an east into Jordan to connect up with Jordan Railway. There is also a plan to extend the Karmi'el Line to Kiryat Shmona at the very Northern tip of Israel.

The bottom line is that it is a very actively expanding and electrifying system, and this has happened irrespective of the political leanings of the government across the spectrum.

One thing that surprises me is how close the Sdrot station is to Gaza township. It is much closer to Gaza than it is to Ashkelon or Netivot, the two adjacent stations.

 

[cirdan]

Interesting map, there are way more abandoned railroads there than I thought.

 

[MARC Rider]

It is much more than they had 20 or 30 years ago.

Back then the passenger rail network was on its last legs, running very few routes (much less than now) and using ancient equipment that hobbled along at low speeds due to the decrepitude of the track. In Tel Aviv the downtown station was sold to a property developer and trains moved to a spartan and peripheral site nestled in a highway junction. And nobody really cared. Railways were not a word that ever got mentioned in politics. Buses were the way to go. The railroads main purpose was to move minerals from the inland mines to the ports. Any track not useful for that purpose was being left to rot.

The last time I rode Israel Railways was back in 1972. I rode a Jerusalem - Tel Aviv train that boarded at the old Ottoman era station in Jerusalem and dumped me off by a highway at Tel Aviv South. The other ride I took was from the old Tel Avic Central to Haifa. Aside from the line continuing north to Nahariyya and south the Beer Sheva, I think that was more or less the rail network at the time. The equipment was pretty old and rattly, but, heck, I was used to riding the Penn Central, so it seemed OK to me. The line out of Jerusalem was very scenic, but also very slow. You can still ride it, but you have to change at Bet Shemesh and it goes to an outlying station in Jerusalem, as the old Turkish station was closed some time ago. As Cirdan says, back then Israelis didn't think rail transport had much potential, but they did have a very good integrated local and intercity bus service. The last time I visited in 1989, it was more or less the same situation. We didn't take any trains, though I did notice tracks in the median of a freeway in Tel Aviv.

 

[cirdan]

graph from Wikipedia impressively showing the re-birth of Israel Railways.



If you take into account that Israel's overall population is just short of 10 million, passenger numbers reaching almost 70 million imply that every citizen travels by train on average 7 times per year.

 

[jis]

The last time I rode Israel Railways was back in 1972. I rode a Jerusalem - Tel Aviv train that boarded at the old Ottoman era station in Jerusalem and dumped me off by a highway at Tel Aviv South. The other ride I took was from the old Tel Avic Central to Haifa. Aside from the line continuing north to Nahariyya and south the Beer Sheva, I think that was more or less the rail network at the time. The equipment was pretty old and rattly, but, heck, I was used to riding the Penn Central, so it seemed OK to me. The line out of Jerusalem was very scenic, but also very slow. You can still ride it, but you have to change at Bet Shemesh and it goes to an outlying station in Jerusalem, as the old Turkish station was closed some time ago.

Service has been discontinued on the Beit Shemesh to Jerusalem Malha 1050mm gauge line. Now the only way to take a train to Jerusalem is on the standard gauge higher speed (100mph) line which terminates deep under Jerusalem at the Jerusalem Yitzhak Navon Station which has direct train service to Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv and North all the way to Nahariya.

As Cirdan says, back then Israelis didn't think rail transport had much potential, but they did have a very good integrated local and intercity bus service. The last time I visited in 1989, it was more or less the same situation. We didn't take any trains, though I did notice tracks in the median of a freeway in Tel Aviv.

Yes, the Ayalon Railway through Tel Aviv, along the Ayalon Highway was completed in the '90s connecting Tel Aviv Central Station to Lod (Lydda) with two additional large station in Tel Aviv - Ha Shalom and Ha Hagana. This also forms part of the through routes to Ben Gurion Airport from all of Coastal North Israel. The Coastal Route continues south of Tel Aviv along the Ayalon Highway all the way to Ashkelon near the Gaza Strip. As mentioned before, the Coastal route is electrified from Ashkelon to Netanya with electrification extension to the North to Haifa and then to Nahariya proceeding apace. Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is electrified. Electrification to the South both on the Lod - Be'er Sheva and Ashkelon - Be'er Sheva route is supposed to start work this years (2023). The Ashdod - Lod line is undergoing electrification at present too.

Interesting map, there are way more abandoned railroads there than I thought.

The abandoned lines were of several different gauges and some were even of dual gauge. There were three different gauges that were used for various segments, and some were converted to and fro depending on convenience. The three different gauges predominantly used were: 1000m (3' 3 3/8") Meter Gauge, 1050mm Ottoman Gauge (built mostly by the Ottomans) and 1435mm (4' 8.5") standard gauge built mostly by the British during the Mandate period. Israel has abandoned all trackage other than Standard Gauge, including the old Beit Shamesh - Jerusalem Malha line where tracks are still in place but service is suspended. When the British initially took over after the First World War, they even imported a bunch of 1067mm Imperial Gauge rolling stock to run on the 1050mm Ottoman Gauge tracks. It was a tight fit, but it worked.

 

[jis]

Here is a new line that is being built that I was completely unaware of until I came across this aerial video from Sergei. It is the so called 431 Line which is almost entirely along the median of Highway 431 connecting the Jerusalem Line where it crosses Highway 431 with Reshon LeZyon Moshe Dayan. The official name of this line is "Rishon LeZion - Modi'in Railway".