Rail transport in Lebanon began in the 1890s as French projects under the Ottoman Empire but largely ceased in the 1970s owing to the country's civil war. The last remaining routes ended for economic reasons in the 1990s. At its peak Lebanon had about of railway.
History
Ottoman Empire
Beirut and Damascus were first connected by telegraph in 1861 and by a macadam road in 1863. Syrian railways connecting the two cities ( over the crest of the Mount Lebanon range) or another port were planned as early as 1871 but were not enacted. In 1889, the Ammiyya Revolt broke out among the Druze and other Syrian farmers. The Ottoman response to the insurrection included a number of railway concessions—quickly sold to foreign interests—to improve the development and centralized control of the region.
Hasan Beyhum Efendi received a concession to construct a tramway between Beirut and Damascus in 1891. Beyhum sold the concession later that year to the French () or , which was anxious to forestall two mooted British lines, one from Jaffa and another from Haifa, either of which would have undercut Beirut's status as the primary port of the northern Levant. In the event, the Jaffa line was never extended towards Damascus and the Haifa line ran out of money having completed just or of track.
Around the same time, the French () or Belgian () purchased another native's concession for the . The Hauran around Muzeirib is Syria's breadbasket and the town also served as the point of departure for pilgrim caravans during the Hajj.
The two lines quickly merged as the or , with its headquarters in Constantinople (Istanbul) and an office in Paris. It originally planned to use a meter gauge but ended with a gauge, along with expensive Abt rack sections to deal with the Mount Lebanon range. It ran through the Dar al-Beida Pass, with the summit at Beidar ( from Beirut) above sea level. The railway completed its port at Beirut in December 1892.
In 1893, the company received a concession for a line from Damascus to Birecik in Anatolia, which prompted its name to be changed to the or (, DHP; ). The network is also known as the in English. The initial concession was later emended to link the two lines at Riyaq instead of Damascus. Service from Damascus south to Muzeirib began in July 1894 (in time for that year's harvest) and to Beirut on 3 August 1895. The trip from the coast to Damascus initially took 9 hours and terminated at three different stations: Baramke Station, Qanawat Station, and Midan Station. Between 1900 and 1908, the separate Hejaz Railway (HRR) expanded from Damascus south to Medina, with a branch to Haifa opened in 1906. The HRR was built to a 1.05-meter gauge to match the Beirut–Damascus Railway and absorbed both the former British concession and the DHP's line south from Damascus.)
Wheat from the Hauran—high-protein semolina used in pasta—was intended to be the mainstay of the railway's income, along with the Muslim pilgrimage trade during the Hajj. The entry of American, Indian, and Australian wheat into the European market amid the continuing Long Depression, however, undercut that trade while the railway was still under construction. Damascene traders had thought the Beirut railway would allow them to export their grain more cheaply; instead, as early as the 1894 harvest, the rail flooded the market, collapsing prices and margins. Completion of the line to the coast did not improve matters, since the world market was trading at still lower prices and the premium once commanded by Hauran wheat—which, being hand-harvested, might include pebbles or weeds—was now lost to machine-reaped grain from the United States. It was not until 1908 that export values again reached the levels of the 1880s. The railway itself was one of the best-managed in the Ottoman Empire: It had total receipts of $434,000 for 1900 and in 1906 received a guarantee from the government of $4320 per mile on the 200-mile Aleppo Railway All the same, the company was never very profitable: it was at perpetual risk of bankruptcy; shares traded at 550 Fr in 1891 and only 468 Fr in 1909; and dividends were minuscule: 4.40 Fr in 1902 and 6.31 Fr in 1909.
The line suffered a serious accident at Aley on 12 April 1904. Aley had grown with the railroad and functioned as a summer resort for the people of Beirut. Part of the locomotive exploded on the 7% incline east of town and, not thinking to apply the brakes, the train was allowed to fly back through the station. Two cars were completely destroyed upon the rocks on the other side, killing 8 and seriously injuring 21.