This lies about 60km from Alexandria on Line 22, the Western Desert Line to Mersa Matruh and beyond to Salloum (Line 23) and the Libyan border, and is famed for two major Second World War battles. Coordinates 30 49 29N 28 57 19E.

The 1943 era station featured in a BBC documentary about the Second World War battles fought there in the Egyptian-Libyan Western Desert. It was broadcast on 5th April 2013 and details can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nts8p

The line looked well-used with reasonable track, signal boxes and semaphore signals. While the modern station did not feature, the former station building next to it looked derelict and unused. The doors and shutters were hanging off and there was no activity inside. Compare with this station as built from the Imperial War Museum photo of approximately 1943. There is also a good photo here that puts the old and new stations in context. May those of all nations killed there rest in peace.

 Note

From April to November 2013 I kept a news blog about Egyptian Railways, where I translated and summarised articles from the Egyptian (Arabic) press and posted them in English. This was through the period of the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood government, after which train services were suspended for many weeks. This is one of a small number of the 150 blog posts I wrote during that time.

If you have any stories about railways or the Middle East in general that you would like help to write or publish, please get in touch.