In 1947, the father of Nassif applied on behalf of his son for a job at the railway authority. Nassif was not completely convinced but his father, a worker for Tripoli’s railway, insisted on getting his son on board. He had several reasons to do so; he thought the job would secure his son’s future on the one hand, especially that the railway authority seemed to be a promising place to work at, with prospects of flourishing and expanding its network in Lebanon. On the other hand, the father believed it was necessary to bequeath his profession to his son. Despite Nassif’s plans for applying to other jobs, he agreed to take a shot at the Tripoli-Beirut train route.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Sultanate began to negotiate the founding of a railway network in the Levant countries, despite the economic crisis it was facing at the time. The French and the British pushed for the immediate initiation of the project, which was widely welcomed by the public, especially the merchants who realized the importance of train connections between the major cities. Thus, the coastal train route (Beirut – Damascus) was open for work in 1895, and gradually, the railways expanded enough to connect the Lebanese inlands to neighboring cities and towns. Tripoli, however, remained isolated, and consequently, started to wither economically with the migration waves to Beirut, the capital city. Meanwhile, the latter prospered, expanding its trade movement with various regions, thanks to the growth of its harbor and the new train connections to it.
In March of 1910, the Ottoman authorities issued a mandate giving the concession of the Tripoli – Homs route to DHP company. Work began, and in the following June of that year, investment was in progress. Tripoli remained isolated from Beirut and Haifa until 1914, when the railway was completed. After its completion, the British used the route to transport soldiers from the north to the south and vice versa, and accordingly, the route became reserved for military use, in addition to the transport of cattle, goods, and wheat.
Nassif’s entry to the railway authority coincided with the halt of all train journeys on the Naqoura – Haifa route after 1948’s Nakba ( literally “disaster” or “catastrophe, the “Nakba” occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war) when the Israelis bombed Haifa’s rails. Before that, Nassif was content in his job as a construction worker at Beirut’s International Airport, but his plans changed when he got accepted into the railway authority. He was in his twenties when he started the new job. He set for himself the purpose of becoming a locomotive driver, just like his father before him. Nassif’s dad used to work in the Beqaai town of Riyaq, where he was born, but when the headquarters of the railway authority were moved to Tripoli, he followed suit, taking his family along.
It wasn’t possible for Nassif to drive a train right away since that job required specific qualifications and skills. He had to start his journey at the end of the ladder and climb his way up through all sorts of positions, until he could finally sit in the driver’s seat. At first, he undertook the simplest and most mundane tasks, but to him, even the most boring task seemed like an opportunity to grow and prove his practical skills. The locomotives’ warehouse was his first stop. That was where all the railroad cars were parked, in addition to the locomotive, which Nassif called “the machine”. His job consisted of preparing the “machines” for upcoming trips. Every worker was responsible for a specific train, and each of them had to prepare his train within two hours of its planned departure.
Nassif used to work the morning shift. He filled the diesel tanks, cleaned the trains from the outside and the inside, made sure to clear traces of rust, filled the locomotive’s water tank from the station’s main reservoir, and finally, added the sand and coal that would be ignited at departure.
At the time, the journey from Tripoli to Beirut used to take over two hours, and the trains that worked on steam had to stop at several stations on the coastline, like Kfar Abida, Byblos, and Jounieh, to refill their water tanks.
Nassif was known by all to be a hard-working employee. He looked forward to the day he would ride the “back of the machine”, as he referred to work on the train itself. His enthusiasm paid off when his superiors took notice of the quality of his work. “They could tell who deserved to get to work on the train”, as he claims. A short while after, Nassif took yet another step towards fulfilling his dream.