The Jezreel Valley railway, or the Valley Train (, Rakevet HaEmek ; ) was a railroad that existed in Ottoman and British Palestine, reconstituted as a modern railway in Israel in the 21st century. It runs from the Mediterranean coast inland along the length of the Jezreel Valley. The historical line was a segment of the longer Haifa–Dera'a Line, which was itself a branch of the larger Hejaz railway.
The historical Haifa–Dera'a line was built at the beginning of the 20th century and connected the Port of Haifa with the main part of the Hejaz railway, the Damascus–Medina line. Like the entire Hejaz railway, it was a narrow gauge line. The last stop of the Haifa–Dera'a line within the Mandate Palestine borders was at al-Hamma, today Hamat Gader. Planning and construction took four years. The railway was inaugurated on October 15, 1905, and regular services operated on it until 1948.
Despite several renewal attempts, the line lay dismantled for decades until 2011 when construction started on a large-scale project to build a new railway from Haifa to Beit She'an along roughly the same route as the historic valley railway. Israel Railways began passenger service on the new valley railway on October 16, 2016.
Historic railway
History
Early plans
In the 1860s the deputy British consul in Haifa, Thomas B. Sandwit, proposed the construction of a railway from the city to Baghdad, through the Jezreel Valley, with a possible extension to Damascus. Sandwit sought to create a continuous railway link between British India and Palestine in order to increase British influence in the area, which was under Ottoman rule.
In 1865, Dr. Charles Franz Zimfel, a German-American doctor, engineer, follower of John Wroe and Zionist, proposed the creation of a railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem, which would continue to Jericho and end in Damascus, with an extension to Haifa through the Jezreel Valley (see Jezreel Valley railway). Zimfel surveyed the territory and became one of the first railway planners in Palestine.
Claude R. Conder, in his extensive Survey of Western Palestine, proposed the construction of a railway from Haifa to the Fertile Crescent. His plans constituted the basis for the actual construction years later.
Sir Laurence Oliphant of Britain, who hoped to facilitate Jewish settlement in the Gilead, proposed the creation of a railway from Haifa to that region, which would then branch out to Aqaba in the south, and Damascus in the north. From Aqaba, he hoped to further extend the railway to the Suez Canal. In his visit to Palestine in 1883, Oliphant changed his plans to what later became the valley railway.
Financing
In 1882, a group headed by the aristocratic Sursock family attained a permit for the construction of a railway in the Jezreel Valley. The family sought to build a railway there to raise land value around the line, which was mostly family-owned, and to enable the cheap transport of goods from the Hauran, also owned by the family, to the Mediterranean Sea for export.
On May 16, 1883, Sir Laurence Oliphant wrote in the New York Sun that he had met with Mr. Sursock regarding the construction of a railway in the Jezreel Valley, and claimed that he could see surveying work as he wrote, from his home in Daliyat al-Karmel. Oliphant founded a company along with Gottlieb Schumacher, one of the founders of the German Colony of Haifa, and Georg Agger of Jaffa, which would find investors for attaining a construction permit from the Sursock family, and the construction itself.
On June 13, 1883, early surveying work was completed and Oliphant began to look for investors, both in Britain and Germany. In a letter he wrote to the Duke of Sutherland, Oliphant claimed that the construction of the line was extremely important both politically and economically, that it would eventually serve as the connection between Asia Minor, the Fertile Crescent, and Egypt, and expressed fear that the line would be under sole German ownership. Oliphant and his peers advertised the line as extremely profitable for investors, estimating the gain at 34%, and promising additional permits to construct additional extensions, a modern port in Haifa or Acre, and a shipping company. For that purpose, Oliphant purchased additional lands on Haifa's coast, and in the Megiddo area.