On Railways Far Away

4 ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST FROM BERLIN TO BAGHDAD

135 Crossing the Bosporus Theremayhavebeenarail-shipwaysomewheremorefascinating than that of Istanbul’s Bosporus, but I have never heard of it. These rail-shipway intersections, where the rail crossing is too great for building a bridge or tunnel link, almost always create a conjunction of great fascination. Southern Pacific’s crossingfromEastBayacrossSanFranciscoBayorNewYork’s big Hudson River ferries that carried great crowds of passengers between the New Jersey terminals and Manhattan were favorites of American train riders, while such rail-water links as the train-ship-train crossings between Great Britain and the Channel terminals of France, Belgium, or Holland were equallypopularamongEuropeanrailroadfanciers.Theseand others, many now gone, had their own supporters, but for me the splendid rail crossing on the Bosporus had become my own special favorite from the first time I saw it in 1961. The two separate terminals, one on each side of the Bosporus , were much different in character. On the western side the trains followed a busy electric commuter line along the Marmara Sea, around the towered bluff above the Seraglio, and then into the handsome nineteenth-century brick Sirkeci station tucked into surrounding landscape. The Haydarpasa terminal, on the other hand, looms above the Asian shore in a massive, five-story, sandstone brick structure supported by 1,100 wooden piles. The steep roof of the building carries long rows of window cupolas and two ornate towers in the main shed, with great stained-glass windows over the entrances. Ten tracks are provided for trains. If the building was not particularly Ottoman in its construction it was not surprising, for the builders were the German architects, Otto Ritter and Helmut Cuno. In its long life the great building suffered some mishaps. In 1917 during the first World War, for example, it was damaged by a fire started after ammunition stored in the station was sabotaged, and it was again damaged by a major fire in 2010. ACROSS THE MIDDLE E A ST FROM BERLIN TO BAGHDAD 4 136 O n R a i lway s Fa r Away Crossing the Bosporus. The Bosporus was a never-ending parade of merchant ships, naval vessels, fishing or cargo boats, and ferries. Passengers entered through a well-restored 0-6-0 at the front end of the station. Traffic was busy on a late April day in 1962. A Krauss-Maffei diesel-hydraulic for the overnight Anadolu Express was getting ready for departure, while to the left is a train headed by a steam tank engine. At far left is a diesel rail car set. 137 A c r o s s t h e M i d d l e E a s t f r o m B e r l i n t o B a g h d a d Some Great Trains of Turkey: The Simplon Orient. The names Orient Express or Simplon Orient are perhaps more of an invocation of the luxuries of international passenger trains than of these trains, which established early standards of rail travel. The train was established in 1885 on a Paris-Istanbul route by way of a steamship connection through Romania, but an all-rail route soon followed. Completion of the Simplon Tunnel in 1904 established a much more direct route, and the Simplon Orient Express became the new standard. The train flourished throughout the 1930s, but the war and the advent of air travel soon brought the era of the luxury train to a close. By 1962, the final leg to Istanbul had become little more than a sleeping car carried by a local train, and the worldwide name was retired that year. Not long before the end of the train, French-built Alsthom electric No. 4003 was ready to depart from Istanbul’s Sirkeci on the long trip west to Paris with its through cars. 138 O n R a i lway s Fa r Away The Simplon Orient. Local train No. 10 was largely made up of cars on the Edirne local, but the Simplon Orient sleepers carried on the train would go all the way to Istanbul. In May 1962, only weeks before the end of the Simplon Orient name, a single sleeper and several coaches wait at the local frontier town of Uzunkopru for the eastbound local train that would complete the long journey to Istanbul. 139 A c r o s s t h e M i d d l e E a s...