from crossing it through the night. Seized with a brain
wave, they lit a fire upon the centre of the bridge. This expedient
proved so successful, that it not only stopped the traffic for that
night, but for all time. When morning came, it was discovered that they
had burnt away the bridge itself, and a new bridge had to be
constructed.

An armoured train was improvised from such trucks as were available, the
sides being sandbagged and a Lewis gun mounted in front. With this, the
railway line was patrolled towards Jerusalem for some miles, until
destroyed bridges made further progress impossible. The result of this
reconnaissance showed that trains could run for some distance along
this line, and ammunition trains were pushed forward accordingly.

When I left Junction Station to rejoin the fighting troops, it was well
on the high road to importance and fame. This, however, never matured.
It was to the policy of railway construction that this place owed its
primary existence; it was to an extension of that policy that it looked
for its future development; it was through a change in that policy that
its glory soon afterwards departed.

The original intention had been to adapt to our use the Turkish railway
system, merely broadening the gauge. In that case, our own broad gauge
line from Kantara, which, immediately on the fall of Gaza, had been
brought through to Deir Sineid, would have been continued along the
route of the Turkish line from Deir Sineid to Junction Station. The
first months of working this Turkish line, still in its narrow gauge
condition as captured, did not afford a promising outlook. These were
months of torrential and persistent rain. The country became a quagmire.
Landslips along the permanent way, and the washing away of culverts,
became of such frequent occurrence, that it was decided to abandon this
portion of this line altogether. Committed, therefore, to no
predetermined route, the engineers were left with the whole country open
to them to choose a course for their new trunk railway to the north.
They chose a line much nearer the coast, and approximately followed the
border line between the fertile plain and the sand dunes from Deir
Sineid as far north as Yebna, thence bearing north-east towards Ramleh
and Ludd. This had the effect of making the future railhead at Ludd.

Situate at the cross-roads where the Valley of Ajalon debouches upon the
Plain, and the ancient route from Jerusalem to Jaffa