The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-02
BUILDING THE RAILROAD TOMECCA
An Enterprise Which All the Nohammedan World
 Cost Dcrayed by the Contributions the POus of Islam.

the profits of !. srking the phosphate and sulphur beds along the line ada an important amount to tne construction funds.
 All food and railroad material must be brought from afar, and as the line progresses southward the cost of the material required is increased. It was decided a while ago that the transport tatfon of the great quantity of railroad
 material over the French railway be- tween Beirut and Damascus had become too costly.
 part Of the railroad fund was therefore, diverted to building a brancn line from the Port of Haiea to the pil- grim railroad about sixty miles south of Damascus. This branch is now fin operation carrying material to the main , line. It is expected In future to bring many thousands of pilgrims from Medi- terranean lands to Haifa and over the branch line to the pilgrim railroad The track is narrow gauge. Many experiences during the progress of con nstruction have been entirely novel
 As the line advanced Into the Ara
 blan desert 1t was found that no mat ter how well seasoned the wooden ties were they were warped Under the in- tense heat of the sun and with tneir use a level track could not possibly be laid. Iron ties have been substitutes for them.
 The greatest difficulty is the lack of water. A few stations have deep wells and others are provided with cisterns to conserve rain water in districts
 where there is any rainfall An ade- quate water suprly, however, has not yet been assured.
 Deep wells are being sunk, some of them with success. The attempts to reach Artesian sources of supply have thus far been without result.
 knx a ly large capacity for holding water and
 hundreds of tons of the precious fluid are transported many miles in big Iron tanks. The necessity of transporting
 water adds much to the cost of rail- road construction.
 A great deal of water must. of course,
 be carried to the southern end of the completed works where many hundreds
 of men in the arid desert must be afl- ply supplied, and great quantities of water are needed for mixing the nor ! tar which goes into the construction
 of the bridges and other works. Ex- | pIorations all along the line make it evident that sufficient water will be
 secured, but how 1t will be most prac- ticaIly and cheaply obtained is a ques- tion of the future.
 Another difficulty is the scarcity of fuel Both Syria and Arabia are very poor in forests and coal fields. These | grim railroad and it's branch line The locomotives and stations are supplied with imported coal, which, of course, is costly. Fortunately the tenn
 perature is so mild that little coal will
 be needed excepting for locomotives
 and machine shops.
 Along the northern fourth of the line | there is no drift sand, but south of
 MudewweFe the desert is entered. On the Trans Caspian Railroad Gen An-
 nenlkoy 9vercame the evil of sand drifts | by building sanu dams across the line i of drift and covering the dams with 1 plaster; also by plan..ng many thous- ands of tamarisks and other desert | plants whose roots tend to keep the
 sand from moving.
 They cannot depend on desert plants along the pilgrim road, but many
 places yield an abundance of stone and i lime rock, so that sand dams may oe built to advantage.
 As the road Qasses through a wholly
 uninhabited waste we might suppose | that the question: of labor would be a
 serious problem, but one of the peculi-
 arities of this road is that it is being built wholly by soldiers. Regiment af-
 te regiment of Turkish troops has fro T I time to time been ordered to the front
 and with pay averaging about twelve and half cents a day the soldiers per- | form the hard work of railroad build | ing with the utmost eheerfulness and
 even with enthusiasm, for they believe
 1t blessed thing to have q part in building the railroad to the holy cities. Far out In tho desert threo large de- taehments of the working force may
 at all times be seen. One is the force