The newly revived railway between Baghdad and Fallujah snakes across the western Iraqi desert, through a landscape of burned-out tanks, abandoned cars and collapsed buildings.

While happy to be back on this line, Hassoun – clad in the marine-blue-and-white uniform of Iraq's railways – proceeds with caution.

So far, he has successfully pushed his new Chinese-built diesel train to 100 kilometers per hour.

In the cafe car, a screen displays the outside temperature at 43 degrees Celsius, and the train's speed at 91 kilometers per hour.

damaged'The train leaves Fallujah every day at 6:45 a.m. to travel the 65 kilometers to the capital, before returning at 3 p.m., a time judged to best suit civil servants and students.

For now, the line between Baghdad and Akashat on the Syrian border only works as far as Fallujah, said Taleb Jawad Kazem, deputy director-general of Iraq's railways.

In 2016, Iraq spent $137 million on 12 new trains from China.

But there is a long way to go before the network can host the 72 daily train journeys that were made in the heyday of Iraq's railways, before the U.N. slapped sanctions on the country in the 1990s.

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