İskenderun Dekovil Hattı

The purpose of this article is to summarize the fact that in the late 1800’s  the narrow­gauged railway was  one of the  first railways  to operate in  Iskenderun insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(Alexandrette);, the port of Hatay insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(Antioch); in South­eastern Turkey. In the 19th century, Iskenderun had a swampy subterranean and in order to overcome this problem, the Ottoman government took action by constructing  a narrow­gauged railway which ran smaller scaled steam­engined trains. This steam­engined railway was used to transport boulder­rock material  to dry out  the swampy regions. But  importantly enough, the narrow­gauged  railway was also used for leisure purposes, for example transporting families to  picnic areas. It is sad to note that the narrow­gauged railway, as importantly as this, used in the building blocks of todays Iskenderun, has long been forgotten.