Classic route
HaEmek (Jezreel Valley) Line
Haifa → Beit She’an · Israel
HaEmek (Jezreel Valley) Line in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 60 km
- Fastest time
- 50 min
- Average speed
- 72 km/h
- Top speed
- 160 km/h
- Operator
- Israel Railways
- Train
- Double-deck push–pull intercity
- Countries
- Israel
- In service since
- 2016
- Runs
- 1–2× hourly each way
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Rebuilt on the 1905 Ottoman Hejaz alignment, it ends at Beit She’an: about 120 m below sea level, among the world’s lowest stations.
The Ottomans opened the original Valley Train in 1905 as a Hejaz Railway branch, hauling Damascus-bound pilgrims down through the Jezreel Valley; the last train ran in 1948. Israel Railways rebuilt the corridor in standard gauge and reopened it in 2016: a billion-dollar, 60 km line now worked by fast double-deckers. From Haifa Bay the train crosses the valley’s farmland below Nazareth’s hills and slides below sea level to Beit She’an, one of the lowest railway stations on earth.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 6656111 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 5 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Israel Railways — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Haifa Bay and Mount Carmel
- Kishon valley farmland
- Old Hejaz station at Kfar Yehoshua
- Afula, the valley capital
- Mount Gilboa slopes
- Beit She’an’s Roman ruins
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