Determining the National Railway Route of Iran: Ups and Downs

This article aims to depict the ups and downs of constructing the first national railway of Iran and determining its route at the time of Reza Shah, as well as the approach of foreigners, especially England.

Method and Research Design:

 Library resources, archival records, and press reports were studied, described and analyzed.

The investigations clarified that from the very beginning of the railway construction debates in Iran, some proposals considered Iran's railway as a connecting corridor with Europe and East Asia, whereas the others propose a national railway within the borders of Iran. Although there was never a practical and serious effort to build a national railway in Iran during the Qajar period, we cannot ignore the fact that many plans were presented and considerable theoretical discussions were raised. Some of those proposals, such as Sani al-Dawlahs’, were used to build the national railway at the time of Reza Shah. In addition, it seems that the first serious effort of the Iranian government to build a national railway started at the time of Prime Minister Watouq al-Dawlah. The British were unsuccessful in persuading the Iranian authorities to build a railway from Qasr-Shirin to Tehran, and the Iranian authorities’ insistence on building a north to south railway reveals their failure. Reza Shah’s persistence had a great impact on building the first national railway of Iran.