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Plans to revive Lebanon’s ghost railways gather steam

While some of Lebanon's train stations have been transformed into night clubs or tourist sites, the country's railway system could be revived at the end of the Syrian civil war to provide supplies to cities such as Homs and Damascus.
A general view shows rusted locomotives on January 11, 2010 at a defunct train station in the northern Lebanese coastal city of Tripoli, one of several unused railway tracks that were destroyed or badly damaged during the Lebanese civil war, even though their reactivation can bring a solution to traffic jam problems in most of Lebanon's major cities according to experts. AFP PHOTO/JOSEPH EID (Photo credit should read JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images)
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Lebanon's train stations have not seen a train depart since the 1990s, and Beirut’s central station was turned into an open-air nightclub in 2014, with a DJ booth added to an old locomotive.

“When I was young, my family used to tell me stories about the trains in Beirut, so I decided to rent the station and give it a new life,” Alain Hasbani, the co-owner of Trainstation Mar Mikhael, told Al-Monitor.

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