JAFFA RAILWAY STATION
يَافَا
יָפוֹ
This site is
dedicated to a railway station that was hidden for 60 years despite being close
to the seafront in the city of Tel
Aviv.
In
1892, a railway line was opened from Jaffa,
a port on the Mediterranean Sea since ancient times, to Jerusalem the holy city. This was the first
railway in the levant and
the trains took about 3 hours to travel the 87 kilometers. This was during the
period when the land was part of the Ottoman Empire but after its collapse in
1917 the League of Nations mandated Britain to administer the land
which it did until withdrawing in 1947, and in 1948 the State of Israel was
created. At that moment Jaffa station was closed, a wall
built around the whole site and from that time until the summer of 2007 it was
not possible to view the station.
In
2004, a project to restore the station was announced and preliminary work started to survey and plan the work. In January 2007
restoration started and six months later the perimeter was taken down and after
60 years the station could again be seen from the coast road that runs between Jaffa
and Tel Aviv.
This site contains the first photographs of the station
undergoing restoration and were take in August 2007.