Newsweek has a 19 December 2008 report A Railway’s Painful Rebirth by Jessica Ramirez.
There is another video of the Baghdad commuter service – including cab views, Chinese and Turkish built locos, sheep, and motorists with a cavalier attitude to level crossing safety.
… Iraq’s railways, which came to a halt during the war, have reopened two lines in the last two months. There is now a Friday train to Samarra and a commuter train, Baghdad’s first, which makes two round trips a day between the Central Baghdad Station and the District of Dora. Railway workers consider these the first signs of progress for an industry trying to recover from the looting, murders and bombings that ravaged it after the U.S-led invasion. In a larger sense, they also reflect the long-term impact of conflict and the struggle to get a country back on track.
I hate that the journalists said that the trains are “old”, and that all is wrong. You cannot expect to have a first world rail network after war and damage. And the passenger cars and locomotives are newer than a lot of the rolling stock that is used in the USA…