İSKENDERUN DEKOVİL HATTI

The purpose of this article is to summarize the fact that in the late 1800's the narrow-gauged railway was one of the first railways to operate in iskenderun (Alexandrette), the port of Hatay (Antioch) in South-eastern Turkey. In the 19th century, iskenderun had a swampy subterranean and in order to overcome this problem, the Ottoman government took action by constructing a narrow-gauged railway which ran smaller scaled steam-engined trains. This steam-engined railway was used to transport boulder-rock material to dry out the swampy regions. But importantly enough, the narrow-gauged railway was also used for leisure purposes, for example transporting families to picnic areas. It is sad to note that the narrow-gauged railway, as importantly as this, used in the building blocks of todays iskenderun, has long been forgotten.