Baghdad Railway - After The War

After The War

In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles cancelled all German rights to the Baghdad Railway. However, the Deutsche Bank transferred its holdings to a Swiss bank.

People in Turkey, Italy, France, and Britain created various arrangements that gave a certain degree of control over the Baghdad Railway to various indistinct interests in those nations. Investors, speculators, and financiers were involved by 1923 in secretive and clandestine ways.

The British Army had completed the southeastern section from Baghdad to Basra, so that part was under British control. The French held negotiations to obtain some degree of control over the central portion of the railway, and Turkish interests controlled the oldest sections that had been constructed inside of Turkey, but talks continued to be held after 1923. The United States involvement in the Near East began in 1923 when Turkey approved the Chester concession, which aroused disapprovals from France and the United Kingdom.

In 1930, a passenger service by road was introduced to bridge the missing section of line between Nusaybin and Kirkuk. At different times the service used Rolls-Royce cars and Thornycroft buses.

In 1932, the Kingdom of Iraq became independent from the UK. In 1936, Iraq bought all railways in its territory from the UK and started building the missing section of line from Tel Kotchek to Baiji. On July 15, 1940, the railway had been completed and two days later the Taurus Express made its first complete journey between Istanbul and Baghdad. In that year, the Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns locomotive works in Britain built a class of streamlined Pacific steam locomotives to haul the Taurus Express between Baghdad and Tel Kotchek. These were delivered to Iraqi State Railways in 1941 and entered service as the PC class.

A new standard gauge railway opened between Baghdad and Basra for freight traffic in 1964 and for freight in 1968. This replaced a metre gauge line built in 1920 and for the first time connected the Bosporus with the Persian Gulf without a break of gauge. Due to the strained relations between Turkey, Syria and Iraq however, continuous traffic remained rare, and other means of transport soon reduced its strategic and economic relevance.