Jordan signed two railway deals in April 2026: a $2.3 billion, 360-km standard-gauge line from the phosphate belt to Aqaba with the UAE — and a trilateral pact with Syria and Türkiye to restore passenger trains between Amman and Damascus by the end of 2026.
The Aqaba Port Railway is the heavy industry deal: 360 kilometers of standard-gauge track moving 13 million tonnes of phosphate from Al-Shidiya and 2.6 million tonnes of potash from Ghor Al-Safi to the industrial terminals of Aqaba — sixteen million tonnes a year through tunnels and bridges in Jordan’s rugged south. It is a 50-50 venture of the UAE’s L’IMAD Holding and a Jordanian consortium of the phosphate and potash companies, the state investment arm and the social security fund, with Etihad Rail as the executing arm; financial close is targeted for early 2027, construction for five years.
The Hejaz pact is the romance: Jordan, Syria and Türkiye agreed in Amman to revive the Ottoman-era line, with Türkiye rebuilding a missing 30-kilometer section inside Syria and Jordan maintaining rolling stock. The goal is a passenger service between Amman and Damascus by the end of 2026 — and, on the horizon, a Mediterranean-to-Red-Sea corridor eventually tied into the Gulf networks.
What actually runs today is modest and lovely: since 2025, limited heritage services on the surviving 1908 narrow-gauge Hejaz Jordan Railway have carried passengers from Amman’s Mahatta station — a working steam-era depot with a locomotive collection — north to Mafraq, with symbolic trips toward Daraa in Syria under discussion.
Behind the heritage trains sits the full blueprint: the 897-km Jordan National Railway from Aqaba to the Syrian border, and Dar’s studied 418-km Aqaba–Amman closed loop projected for 40 million tonnes by 2030 and 50 by 2040, plus a light-rail link toward Queen Alia airport on the Hejaz alignment. The honest sequence is freight first, intercity passengers second, and the revival of Mahatta as the cultural prize in between.
Do not come to Amman expecting a rail city — come expecting a railway story. Ride the heritage Hejaz train out of Mahatta while it still smells of coal smoke; the day the Damascus service returns, this becomes the most romantic border crossing in the Levant. Until then, the trains to watch are the phosphate rakes rolling south to Aqaba.
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