On the left side of the track, a man faces the oncoming train, his left arm held high. One of the guards leans out the door and snatches a slip of paper from him. It's an affidavit stating that the train is running on time.
Farther along, a man in a corduroy jacket kneels at the point where two tracks meet, using a tool to adjust the rails to steer the train to the left, off the main track and onto the Dora-bound one.
Safety on this train depends on somewhat primitive methods, something that riles Salim and Jassem, especially when the train crosses intersections where there are no gates.
"The cars don't expect us," Salim gripes as he leans on the horn while nearing what he says is Baghdad's busiest intersection. The relatively few cars out at such an early hour -- it's just past 6 a.m. -- slow, but many do so only after seeming to hesitate. Many of the people in cars look at the train in wonder.
As the train nears another intersection, a convoy of U.S. military vehicles begins crossing the track, their gun turrets twisting every which way. Salim doesn't slow, even when an Iraqi soldier standing in the intersection waves his arms.
The train enters the intersection, passing between two of the armored vehicles. "I'm used to it. I deal with this every day," says Salim, who complains that the stress of the job has given him hypertension and diabetes.
To reduce the chance of accidents, the train slows to a few miles per hour when crossing intersections and through neighborhoods of illegally built homes. According to Jassem, the track by law should have about 75 feet of space on either side. That's clearly not the case. "Look, you can practically touch the houses," he says, waving his arm out the engine door as the train passes no more than a couple of feet from some dwellings.
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The sun is up by the time the train reaches Dora, whose outdoor market was a destination for all of Baghdad until sectarian violence turned the neighborhood into a no-go area for most. The train station sits next to the slowly reviving market, as well as to a taxi stand where scores of minivans wait each morning to take passengers to central Baghdad.
The train is competition for the taxis, which charge about the same as the 1,000-dinar (85-cent) train fare but can take more than an hour to reach downtown if traffic is bad or security issues cause road closures. Still, it's a hard sell for the railway team, faced with a population that has never had a commuter train and that loves its cars.
