BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1671, 6 February 1917, Page 1

BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY.

By piercing a luimc! through the Taurus Mountains, in Southern Asia Minor, the Germans have conquered the last natural obstacle on the railway route from Berlin to Bagdad, says the London Daily Mail of November 25. Some months will pass before the tunnel is (it to take traffic, but when it is complete the journey from Berlin to Bagdad will be greatly shortened. This is the last of the big tunnels to be made on the line. That through the Amanus range was completed last year. The total length of the Bagdad railway in Asia Minor, from Haidar Pasha, opposite Constantinople, to Bagdad, is 1510 miles. The exact mileage that has yet to be completed — between Has-el-Ain, east of Aleppo, and Bagdad —is not known. The enemy has been very active in pressing on the construction of the line, and it is probable that the gap does not at present exceed 200 miles, over country which can readily be traversed by motor vehicles. The construction of this railway and of its branches, the chief of which runs south from Aleppo through Damascus to Jerusalem and the Egyptian frontier, with another line passing east of the Dead Sea to Mecca, has been an object of German policy for the last 20 years. The line towards Egypt has now been carried some distance beyond Beersheba, so that when the Taurus tunnel is open for traffic it will be possible for a German to go from Berlin to the desert of Sinai by one continuous railway, interrupted only by the crossing of the Bosphorus.