Baghdad Railway
The Baghdad Railway had reached Aleppo by 1912, with the branch to Tripoli complete, by the start of World War I; and onwards to Nusaybin by October 1918. The Turks, who sided with Germany and the Central Powers, decided to recover the infrastructure south of Aleppo to Lebanon in 1917. The Baghdad Railway created opportunity and problems for both sides, being unfinished but running just south of the then defined Syrian/Turkish border. Post war, the border was redrawn, and the railway was now north of the border. From 1922 the Baghdad Railway was worked in succession by two French companies, who were liquidated in 1933 when the border was again redrawn, placing the Baghdad Railway section again in Syrian control. As a result, a new agreement was achieved between the French controlled Syria and the Ottoman Sham-Hama Railway Company (the operator of Damascus Railway) to put the Aleppo Railway under the management of the company for 15 years. As a result, the Aleppo railway line was connected with Damascus. During the 1940s, after the independence of Syria from the French mandate, the management agreement was expired and the Syrian government itself took over the administration of the Aleppo Railway with the establishment of the new Syrian Railway Company at the end of the 1940s.