By Train to Jerusalem
On my last visit to Israel I finally did something that I have long wanted to do - I travelled up to Jerusalem by train!
I arrived at the airport at the ungodly hour of 3.00 am and found a quiet corner in which I could doze until the place came to life again. Not only were early morning taxis horribly expensive, but there was little point in reaching Jerusalem before sunrise: I've already taken photographs of Jerusalem as the sun rises over the Mount of Olives and the first fingers of dawn light up the golden Dome of the Rock. At 6.00 I ventured out to find a sherut, the shared taxis which are the most economical way of getting to Jerusalem quickly, but as I pushed my luggage trolley out of the airport terminal, I had to cross over a railway line and because I had time to spare, it occurred to me that now was my opportunity to use the train.
The railway line from Jaffa to Jerusalem was first proposed by Sir Hugh Montefiore, the Jewish financier who did much to establish a modern Jewish colony in Jerusalem. Fearing a British plot, his plan was turned down by the Turkish authorities, who continued to turn down other plans put forward by a variety of people, until finally Joseph Navon, a Jew but also an Ottoman citizen who knew how things worked in the corrupt Turkish empire, travelled to Constantinople and bribed the Turkish authorities. It cost him 5,000 Turkish lire, but in 1888 he received the coveted firman allowing him to build the railway.
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| The train to Jerusalem arrives at Ha-Haganah station, Tel Aviv. |
Mind you, the cost of the project nearly beggared both him and his backers, as the narrow-guage rails snaked through the Judean hills, but in August 1891 the first passengers arrived in triumph in Jerusalem only to find, to their dismay, that the train station was on the opposite side of the Hinnom Valley from the Old City. Despite the sultan's firman, the local Turkish authorities had prevented the station being built any closer to the city centre - and the station in Jaffa was equally remote from the centre of town for the same reason. I'm not sure whether to be sorry or glad for this obstructiveness on the part of the Turks; on the whole, though, I suppose we can be glad that the wonderful walls of Suleiman the Magnificent were not demolished to make way for a rail terminus just outside the church of the Holy Sepulchre!
After World War I the British, who now ruled in Palestine, rebuilt the railway to standard guage and trains ran daily between Jaffa and Jerusalem. Navon had hoped that the railway would cut the travel time to two hours, but the steepness of the grade and the many sharp corners slowed the trains to four hours - the same as a horse and carriage - and later that dropped to six hours, which meant one train a day in each direction.
I have read several accounts of the journey up to Jerusalem by train. George MacDonald Frazer, author of the Flashman diaries, describes the journey in one of his semi-autobiographical McAuslan books. H. V. Morton mentions it in his excellent travel books, but my favourite account is from an old guide book where the author remarks, "It requires only an ordinary amount of activity to jump out and pick the flowers along the line, and rejoin the train as it laboriously pants up the steep ascent — a feat I myself have occasionally performed."
I turned away from the sherut station and quickly located the ticket office, where I was delighted to find that the train journey to Jerusalem only cost 20 shekels (as opposed to 50 by sherut). I was less pleased to discover that the train didn't start from the airport and I would have to go back one stop towards Tel Aviv and change trains there. Trains in that direction were frequent, so after a short wait I boarded one and got out at the first stop.
There, after considerable hunting around, I found that the trains to Jerusalem ran an hourly schedule and I had just missed one. I had to sit on the platform for nearly an hour, persecuted by Israelis who appeared to think that my greatest desire in life was for them to come and sit beside me and blow cigarette smoke in my direction. Knowing that the wretches will eventually die of lung cancer is poor consolation: I wanted something that would kill them off in the next thirty seconds!
The Jerusalem train was due at 8.03 and at 8.03 precisely a train drew up at the platform. I duly boarded it, though caution led me to enquire of a soldier whether this train went to Jerusalem. He nodded vigorously and I moved up to an empty carriage, having mistaken his nasty smirk for a friendly smile. To my perplexity the train proceeded back through the airport station and I then discovered that it wasn't the Jerusalem one after all but was bound for Modin. I was not at all pleased with Israeli Railways for their failure to put a sign somewhere in or on the train to indicate its destination.
By the time I got back to the junction I had missed the 9.00 o'clock train and had to wait until 10.03 - and this time I found a railway employee and dogged his footsteps as he went about his business on the station until he finally pointed to the 10.08 train and told me that it was the Jerusalem one.
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| The comfortable interior of the train to Jerusalem. |
The first part of the journey was accomplished expeditiously. The train clattered across the coastal plain at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour, but once we were past Ramleh the speed dropped and at the same time the train began to wind its way up a valley whose sides rose steeply above us. I don't think I could have got out to pick flowers - and the carriage doors were locked in any case - but it was close: according to my computer, we were doing 12 mph with a breath-taking 20 mph on the straight bits. I kept my eyes open for Battir, which is close to the ruins of Bethar, the last city to be conquered by the Romans as they crushed the Bar Kokhba revolt, but I couldn't identify it, which was a disappointment.
I didn't realise just how lucky I was to be doing this trip. Back in 1998 the line was closed, partly because it needed substantial rennovation and partly because Arab villagers along the route were in the habit of stoning the trains. After six years the line was completely relaid - and the Arab villagers discouraged or evicted - but there are plans to build a completely new high speed line that will tunnel through the hills much closer to the modern highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I greatly fear that once that is opened, the old line will be allowed to sink into disuse again.
Half-way through the hill section there is a short stretch of double line where we stopped and waited for the down train, but once it had passed we resumed our crawl up into the hills. I had previously followed the route on Google Earth and had some idea of just how the line meandered, but I did notice on my computer that at one point we were actually heading back towards Tel Aviv, so tortuous was the valley along which we were travelling.
Finally, nearly two hours after leaving Tel Aviv, the train drew up at the Biblical Zoo, a collection of more than usually depressing animals in concrete pens (at least, they were on my one and only visit). The zoo claims that its exhibits illustrate the Bible, but the links between some of the animals and the Hebrew Scriptures are tenuous, to say the least. The train was suddenly empty as a horde of children and their harrassed parents disembarked and marched away towards the animals.
It was at this point that I began to scan the opposite side of the valley for a glimpse of Ein Yael and its Living Museum. The Diggings team dug there some years ago with Israeli archaeologist Gershon Edelstein and uncovered a Roman villa, which is now the central exhibit of a museum where young volunteers come and recreate life in Palestine of the 1st century AD. Potters work their wheels, spinners and weavers make cloth, women cook on authentic stoves and carpenters use primitive tools. The place is popular with school trips as well as tourists who want to experience life in the Second Temple period.
Unfortunately I couldn't identify the site and I was still looking when the train stopped, barely half a mile from the Biblical Zoo, at Melha station, the end of the line. This is even further from the city centre than the original station, kept away this time not by intransigent Turks but by intransigent Jews who opposed the rebuilding of the line on the grounds that the trains would be too noisy. In the first place, if they objected to noise they shouldn't have built their homes so close to a railway line, and in the second place I doubt they would have heard the trains above the roar of the traffic that swirls around the old station, which is now to become an arts centre.
Would I do it again? I doubt it. Quite apart from the inordinate length of time taken on the journey I spent 40 shekels for a taxi from Melha to the Old City, so the train is by no means the cheap option. However I am very glad that I did it once before the high speed line supersedes the historical one. It's just a pity the train I was in wasn't a steam train. Now that would have really been nostalgic!
© Kendall K. Down 2009
