The railway line, 571 km in length, was built by Bechtel under Aramco supervision with the costs recovered by Aramco out of oil royalties.
On his visit to Egypt, Ibn Saud had been most impressed by the train which took him from Cairo to Alexandria and the journey instilled in him a determination to build a railway in his own Kingdom.
King Abdul Aziz (Ibn Saud) at the inauguration of the Saudi railroads mainline track, Riyadh, 19 Oct 1951 |
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