In Sep­tem­ber, 1892, mod­ern trans­porta­tion arrived in the Holy Land. A meter-gauge rail­road between Jaf­fa and Jerusalem opened the area to mod­ern tourism. The project under­tak­en by two young Jews, Joseph Navon and Joseph Amza­lak, was financed by Johannes Frutiger, a Protes­tant banker, and licensed by the Ottoman gov­ern­ment. Navon lat­er sold the enter­prise to a group of Catholic busi­ness­men in Paris. Antho­ny Travis, deputy direc­tor of the Sid­ney M. Edel­stein Cen­ter for the His­to­ry and Phi­los­o­phy of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, and Med­i­cine at the Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty of Jerusalem, pro­vides a live­ly, illus­trat­ed account of the devel­op­ment of this rail­road that sur­vived despite poor con­struc­tion and inad­e­quate traf­fic. He includes maps, graphs, and the impres­sions of ear­ly trav­el­ers on the train. He con­cludes with infor­ma­tion about con­tem­po­rary rail trans­porta­tion in Israel and plans for trains from Ben-Guri­on Inter­na­tion­al Air­port to Jerusalem. This lit­tle-known chap­ter of Israel’s his­to­ry will inter­est train buffs as well as historians.