File 2764/1904 Pt 2 'Baghdad Railway: General negotiations 1908-10.' [‎356r] (726/799)

BAGDAD RAILWAY.
SECRET.
[15664]
No. 1.
War Office to Foreign Office,—{Received May 7.)
THE Director of Military Operations presents his compliments to the Under
secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and begs to forward, for his information, a copy
of a Report recently received from Mr. David Eraser, who is now travelling in Asia
Minor on behalf of the “Times,” giving an account of a journey over the°proposed
route for the second section of the Bagdad Railway.
War Office, May 6, 1908.
Inclosure in No. 1.
Report by Mr. Fraser respecting the Bagdad Railway.
NOTES on the second section of the Bagdad Railway, compiled by the under
signed during a journey across the Taurus in December 1907. Much of the journey
was made in darkness or driving rain, which obscured a view of the country. The
writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. is therefore indebted to information obtained from an article by Professor
Sir W. M. Ramsay (“ Cilicia, Tarsus, and the Great Taurus Pass,” “ Geographical
Journal,” October 1903), for particulars not personally observed.
(Signed) DAVID ERASER,
Aleppo, April 5, 1908.
The existing section of the Bagdad Railway, from Konia to Bulgurlii, 200 kilom.
in length, traverses a perfectly level plain until within 2 miles of the terminal station.
Pour miles east of Eregli station there occurs the terrace-like arrangement of low
rolling hills, which fringes this part of the plateau of Asia Minor. Eregli is near the
edge of the plateau, Bulgurlii is just within the fringe, and any extension beyond the
latter station involves the line in the broken ground which divides the plateau from
the low level sea coast littoral. The plateau at Eregli is some 3,600 feet above the
sea, wdiereas Adana, the projected terminus for the next section of the Bagdad Railway,
is no more than 63 feet above sea level. It is the transition from the high to the
lower level, to be compassed only through complicated hill and mountain systems,
that constitutes a formidable difficulty to the construction of the second section of
the railway.
Between Konia and Eregli, as mentioned in former notes, construction of the
first section of the Bagdad Railway was phenomenally easy. Pour miles east of
Eregli the line begins to rise by easy gradients to Bulgurlii, which is probably not
more than 60 or 80 feet above the level of the adjacent plain. The station is the only
building in sight, as the village after which it is named is situated in the plain some
I miles to the north-east. All around Bulgarin Station is desert without any signs of
cultivation, and the surrounding country is probably valueless except as pasture lan i.
It is evident that the engineers Tvere hard put to it to complete the stipulated distance
of 200 kilom. without incurring undue expense. The absolute end of the line lies in
a stony hollow a kilometer beyond the station. The ends of the rails are poked
nakedly forward from the low embankment in which they rest, and point at a steady
ascent that could not be surmounted except by deep cutting through solid rock. The
section ends absolutely at the psychological moment from a financial point of view,
for additional construction would have involved a totally different scale of expenditure.
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