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Iran Railways


rogerfarnworth
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This is the first of what I hope will be a few articles about the Railways of Iran. It focusses on the first line built between Tehran and Rey and operating from 1888 to around 1960-61.

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/03/23/railways-in-iran-part-1-tehran-to-rey-1888

 

I have been reading old copies of the Railway Magazine from the 1950s and 1960s. The old small format magazines somehow seem more attractive than the glossy larger format modern magazines, perhaps that is a sign of ageing!



 

In the January 1963 edition of the magazine there is a long article about the railways of Iran which is based on a visit in 1961 to Iran by M.H. Baker MA.

 

Until the 1930s, Iran was relatively isolated, but from around 1865 various European Countries had sought concessions to construct railways but the Imperial government continued to value isolation above integration.

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This is the next installment covering the Railways of Iran. ......

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/03/24/railways-in-iran-part-2-the-1910-to-1945

 

 The Trans-Iranian Railway - When completed, the Trans-Iranian Railway was an immense achievement. It ran for 850 miles and linked the South and North of the country. For the first time the northern agricultural lands and the Caspian Sea ports would be linked to ports and oilfields in the south. It linked the capital Tehran with the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea. The railway connected Bandar Shah (now: Bandar Torkaman) in the north and Bandar Shahpur (now: Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni) in the south via Ahvaz, Ghom and Tehran.

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Back in 1975 Bros in Law was working in Ahvaz and we did the journey from Tehran to Ahvaz and separately onto Korramshahr. The main journey in each direction was done over night so very interesting to learn what we missed! Although a road trip did show how difficult moving anywhere in Iran was. There were large stock piles of old steam locos in Ahvaz and Dezful.

 

Separate to the difficulty of mountains was how wet the southern part of the line was. I have photos taken going to/from Korramshahr which is all water with the parallel road just above the flood plain.


A very few photos at https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/iranrailway - not somewhere to take photos of railways I was nearly arrested taking the tank wagon photo!

 

Paul Bartlett - not able to post on your blog. Refused.

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After the War, Iran's railways experienced a period of relative stagnation. Significant developments did not occur until the 1950s.

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/03/28/railways-in-iran-part-3-1945-to-the-1960s

 

Quote

 The Cambridge History of Iran - Volume 1, which was published in 1968 says that after shortages disappeared a pattern became established, and by 1968, railways provided the basic freight-transport service from the Persian Gulf ports to Tehran and the eastern Caspian Sea region. The authors said, "Branch lines have been extended to Tabriz and Mashhad (Meshed), mitigating to a high degree the relative decline of these cities since 1925. A 120 mile westward extension of the railway line from Tabriz, now being built under the sponsorship of the Central Treaty Organization, will connect the Iranian and Turkish railways. (It was completed between Tehran and Tabriz by 1960.) An eastward extension from Qum, south of Tehran, is now complete as far as Yazd (but not by 1961 when Baker visited) and will ultimately connect with the Pakistan railway system in Baluchistan. During World War I a line of this system (then part of India) was extended as far as Zahidin in Iran, a short distance from the border. Service to Zahidin is provided by Pakistan National Railways, but there is no regular schedule." The line when built was 5ft. 6in. gauge.

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7 hours ago, rogerfarnworth said:

Hi Paul, I will have to look at that. Others seem to be posting on the blog OK. My apologies to you.

Presumably because they have facebook or other passwords. It doesn't appear to recognise Google passwords.

Paul

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The rule of the Shah in the 1970s became increasingly authoritarian. The royal family appropriated a large amount of the country's income for themselves and gradually the clerics became less and less content with the ruling classes. The result, as we know, was major political change at the end of the decade.

 

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My recollections of the 1960s are vague. As a child I was almost entirely focussed on my immediate environment. The 1970s were a different matter. Events in the Middle East and in Iran began to intrude on my childhood. New of conflicts in Palestine and in the wider region became part of my consciousness.

Many of us will be aware that Shah left Iran for exile in January 1979, as the last Persian monarch, leaving his duties to a regency council and Shapour Bakhtiar who was an opposition-based prime minister. Ayatollah Khomeini was invited back to Iran by the government, and returned to Tehran to be greeted by several million Iranians. 

 

 

The railways continued to serve the country and saw some significant developments during the decade.

 

I hope you find this next article interesting. ... 

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/03/30/railways-in-iran-part-4-1970s

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While undertaking the research for these articles on the railways in Iran. I was delighted to find some material in  a number of European language posted on a thread about the Railways of Iran on the SJK Postvagen forum. This next post is numbered out of sequence as I have already begun work of the period from the 1980s onwards, but the material is really interesting (in my view). I have had to use Google Translate to get the first draft of the different papers referred to in the link article and then I have had to clarify or paraphrase a number of things to make the text work in English. ....

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/04/03/railways-in-iran-part-6-foreign-articles-collection-a

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I have a small collection of items relating to the U S Army operating the line during WWII.

Attached are scans of train order paper work used to manage the traffic.

As you can see there are three languages in use Arabic, Russian and  English ( well the near approximation the the Americans use !!!!)

I also have two timetables and the rule book for the line. This is in English from the front and Arabic from the back!

Iran005.jpg

Iran006.jpg

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To finish the collection of translated articles from other sources, this post focuses on chapters from a book written in Danish in the 1930s about the filming of a documentary about the building of the Tran-Iranian Railway. ......

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/04/13/railways-in-iran-part-8-foreign-articles-collection-b

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5 hours ago, rogerfarnworth said:

After the Revolution. ......

 

This next post brings the story of the Railways of Iran up to the Millenium. ....

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/04/13/railways-in-iran-part-5-from-1980-to-1999

I haven't read in detail but that is the most incredible story. You have to have been to Iran to have some idea of the topography of the challenges these engineers must have faced to build such considerable railway infrastructure. We went from Isfahan to Bandar Abbas by road in 1975 and it was the most incredible journey crossing the highland between the two.

 

Iran was a very complex country in those days. Revolution was in the air. We drove north west along the coast from there and missed the turning we needed. We stopped at a police station where a policeman was lounging outside - there was no other housing etc nearby just a control post. However, on asking for directions, in English (my Bros in Law had learnt virtually no Farsi in the couple of years he worked there) he went inside to ask a senior, English speaking officer for help. He left his rifle propted against the wall!

 

Paul

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One of the joys of doing research is discovering little gems in surprising places. This happened to me just recently as I was searching for information and particularly for images associated with the railways of Iran up to the end of the Second World War. The result is this next article which I have agreed with Lancaster City Museum and the King's Own Royal Regiment Museum. ......

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/04/13/railways-in-iran-part-12-photographs-from-the-second-world-war

Edited by rogerfarnworth
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  • 2 weeks later...

This next post gives some insight into what is being achieved in Iran at the moment. I must acknowledge that it is not a comprehensive report on Iran's Railways in the 21st Century, merely a snapshot of what has been happening. 

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/04/25/railways-in-iran-part-7-some-limited-reflections-on-irans-railways-in-the-21st-century

Edited by rogerfarnworth
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  • 2 months later...

This is probably my penultimate post on the railways of Iran. I want, at some stage to review what is known about the railways which served the Oil fields in the South of Iran and a final installment. This post looks at the various forms of motive power on the railways of Iran since the first line was built before the turn of the 20th Century. I cannot guarantee that this survey is completely comprehensive. .......

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/06/30/railways-in-iran-part-10-motive-power

Edited by rogerfarnworth
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  • 4 months later...

This is another post in a series about the railways of Iran. It focuses on a narrow gauge system, some 40 miles in total length, which served the Abadan Oil Depot and refinery. Available information is sparse. ....

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/11/19/railways-in-iran-part-11-anglo-persian-oil-company-ltd

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  • 2 weeks later...

Since first posting about APOC/AIOC on 19th November, a number of people have pointed me to considerably more information about the 2ft 6in gauge and the 3ft gauge railways that served different part of the Company's network in Iran. If the original post of the 19th November was of interest it has now been significantly extended.

 

The link remains the same so the original more limited text cannot easily be accessed. It has been subsumed in the newer version on the same link. Just for convenience I have repeated the link here:

 

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/11/19/railways-in-iran-part-11-anglo-persian-oil-company-ltd

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  • 9 months later...

Recently, reading old copies of BackTrack magazine, I came across an article which included memories from an Army engineer of time spent in Iran in the early 1940s and in the same issue of the magazine a short note about the involvement of the GWR in Iran.

 

These seemed to be fitting items for an addendum to this series of articles. This is the link to the new post.

 

https://rogerfarnworth.com/2021/09/14/railways-in-iran-an-addendum

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