From Valley Valley Stories: Katinka's trailer comes to life

104 years ago the engineer Baruch Katinka mounted an engine of a plane on a freight car, which made him gallop on the railroad at an almost imaginary speed for those days.

Last week, a reconstruction of the caravan was placed at the historic site at the Emek plant in the plant.

"A story about a combination of a caravan and a plane of one special person"

Eli Ashkenazi

16/04/2022

Saturday, 16 April 2022, 17:49 Updated: 17:56

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In the video: Launch of Baruch Katinka's trailer model at Kinneret Academic College (Photo: Roni Panai)

At the end of the second decade of the twentieth century the Jezreel Valley was sparsely populated, so the imaginary spectacle that took place in the heart of the valley one day in early March 1918 must have been seen by a few;

A train car seems to pierce the valley at an unimaginable speed in the direction of Haifa.

On the trailer sat two men wearing pilot hats.

If there had been a passerby walking that side of the track that day he would probably have thought it was a mirage.

But it was not long before that crazy car seemed to be making its way back east, towards Afula.

Many stories and legends have been linked to the Valley Railroad.

There is no doubt that this strange play, which was then repeated several more times, is one of the most fascinating and special of them all.

It was a groundbreaking and imaginative venture by engineer Baruch Katinka.

"Air trailer" he called his invention in which he mounted an engine of a plane on a freight car and caused the car to gallop on the railroad at a speed of one hundred kilometers per hour.

It was three times faster than the speed at which the train moved from Haifa to Afula and from there to Tzemach.

The real data is probably a bit different;

Ben Keshels, a researcher in the history of aviation in Israel, found various documents that indicate that when the aerial carriage traveled on the track in the direction of Jenin, it was at a speed of about 76 kilometers per hour, but said he did not intend to shatter the legend. Km / h.

Last week, 104 years after the same prank by the genius engineer, Baruch Katinka, a model of the same "aerial trailer" was restored as a souvenir of that extraordinary story and as a tribute to the groundbreaking engineer.

The caravan was placed at the historic reconstruction site at the Emek plant in Tzemach at the Kinneret Academic College.

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The restored trailer (Photo: official website, Ziv Ofir)

Lovers of trains and heritage stories of the Valley Railroad are well aware of the name of the engineer who signed this imaginary story, Baruch Katinka, but in Israeli memory his name is not known.

Katinka was born in 1887 in Bialystok and was certified in Germany as a mechanical and electrical engineer.

In 1908 he came to Eretz Israel and worked as an engineer in the Atid factory, later "Shemen", in Haifa.

Two years later he was appointed chief engineer and technical supervisor on the Hijazi railway in Israel, a senior rank that was unusual for a Jew under Ottoman rule.

During this period the senior staff of the railway consisted mainly of German experts and the workers were Turks and Arabs.

By virtue of the senior position he held on the train, Katinka would occasionally visit the German squadron camp located in Merhavia near Afula.

It was the 304th Bavarian Squadron, which arrived in the fall of 1917 from Germany to assist its Turkish allies in the battles against the English.

Their main task was intelligence photography.

For the German Air Force camp in Merhavia, a special railway was laid from the train station in Afula, in order to facilitate the receipt of supplies.

Katinka had good relations with the German pilots, including a Jewish pilot.

One day he received an order from the top headquarters to build small trailers that would serve the same base.

In his book "From now until now" he wrote that he applied to the main management of the train for engines, but the answer he received was that they did not have such engines and had to find them himself.

"An order from the High Command was an order that should not be refused," he wrote.

He turned to his friends from the Air Force and a day later the squadron commander replied that he had found an engine for him.

When he arrived at the camp, he was presented with a plane with broken wings and no rudder or tail.

"But his body as well as the propeller were healthy and intact," Katinka wrote.

"I was amazed at the size of the engine. Its power was about 160 horsepower, while for a trailer the tenth and even twentieth part was enough," he continued in his description that clarified the engine power.

He decided to try to drive the car with the help of the powerful engine.

After tying the fuselage tightly to the caravan he called one of the pilots.

"A short time later a pilot came, sat down in the plane seat and offered me to sit next to him, instead of the bomber. We wore special pilot hats and the pilot started the engine."

The restored trailer (Photo: official website, Ziv Ofir)

Katinka wrote his story in a picturesque and humorous way.

By the way, the same book has become over the years a rare and sought-after collector's item.

He continued to describe how "the propeller started to move quickly. I opened the car's handbrake and suddenly the car started to move forward making a terrible noise and its speed increased. Halfway from Afula to Haifa, when I realized the speed exceeded the limit, I signaled the pilot to stop. How to get back? The propeller can not turn back. I decided to continue to Haifa, although the road between Afula and Haifa was forbidden to train trains for fear of British shelling. "The car and the propeller were turned forward, in the direction of Afula. We flew back to Afula with my hands on the brake to slow down the speed of the car as much as possible. We arrived in Afula without any problems," he wrote about the same flight on the railway.

Following that flight-trip he suggested to the pilots that he build them similar carriages.

This time, as a lesson from the first time he also installed a handbrake.

On the surface of the caravan he added fragments of railway tracks, to add weight to the caravan, he installed two benches and a fence around it and painted everything in "great green", as he defined it.

After two working days he called on the German commander to come to the inauguration of the wagons.

"The commander, a friend of his pilots and I, sat down on this strange caravan and made our way to Haifa and back (..) to the joy of the pilots there was no limit. They had a useful tool they are used to. They thanked me from the bottom of their hearts."

Placing the restored trailer in the plant (Photo: Official website, Ziv Ofir)

According to Ben Keshels, the main motivation in the development of the aerial caravan was the desire of the German pilots to arrive in Haifa in a reasonable time.

He noted that the pilots stationed in Merhavia engaged in intelligence missions deep in British enemy territory.

These were flights that made them take a risk and in view of their nature could not get air cover.

"They were in constant operational tension and were looking for an outlet. The German colony in Haifa was defined by them as a 'paradise in the wilderness'. There were alcohol, sea and women. Katinka's development allowed them to get there quickly.

By the way, the passion for alcohol led at the end of that year also the Australian soldiers to use the trailer for the same need.

Cushles says that after the British army occupied the north of the country, Australian soldiers learned of a treasure trove of wine bottles left by German soldiers inside a cave near a military camp in Jenin.

They "flew" from Haifa to Jenin with the trailer, located the cave and loaded the bottles of wine on the trailer.

But on one of the descents,

Katinka in his book says that the train manager who surprisingly arrived in Afula was not particularly enthusiastic about the same caravan;

"He insulted me for my laziness and asked how could a person be so lazy and make such a monster."

Neither Katinka's nor the enthusiastic pilots' explanations convinced the director who announced that from that day on the air caravan would be called "Katinkas Paulhit" ("Katinka's Laziness").

That fascinating story is just one episode of the plot of Katinka's life.

In the same year, 1918, he founded the "Association of Engineers in the Land of Israel" and was one of the founders of the Bat-Galim neighborhood in Haifa and one of the leaders of the Hadar HaCarmel committee in the city.

He then moved to Jerusalem and was one of the leaders of the Haganah organization in the city.

In his profession as an engineer, Katinka built the YMCA building in Jerusalem, the main post office and the Palace Hotel together with the contractor Tuvia Donia. Of Katinka.

One of the stories linked to Katinka relates to his involvement in the construction of the Palace Hotel;

After the outbreak of the Great Arab Revolt in 1936, following which a British committee came to the country to investigate the events, the "Elephant Committee", the committee's meetings were held at the Palace Hotel.

It is said that Katinka, the hotel builder who probably knew the building very well, installed microphones in the committee's meeting room.

The same action led to the leaders of the national institutions being informed of the contents of the committee's meetings, which were held behind closed doors.

It is important to note that the person who set up the hotel was in fact the Supreme Muslim Council headed by Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini.

The restored trailer (Photo: official website, Ziv Ofir)

Katinka, who was married and the father of two daughters and a son, died of an illness this week 57 years ago, on April 18, 1965.

The story of the aerial caravan ignited over the years the imagination of the "freaks" of the valley train.

Occasionally a thought also arose to restore the same caravan, but this did not happen.

A few months ago one of those Valley Railroad heritage keepers decided to do just that.

This is Ziv Ofir, Vice President of the Kinneret Academic College. In the southern part of the college campus is the historic train station, Tzemach Station

. In view of the needs of the college, it was decided to annex the area of ​​the old station south of Road 92 to the area of ​​the educational institution that was imprisoned between the Sea of ​​Galilee and the road.

Since the station has been wiped out, it has undergone conservation, restoration and restoration processes by the Council for the Preservation of Heritage Sites.

Over time, various components that were part of the same important train station were added, the facility surrounding the locomotives was exposed, the water tanks that fed the steam tanks were restored and the historic station buildings underwent a facelift.

At the same time, Ophir began holding memorial events for the historic battle in which the station was occupied by the Australian cavalry in the First World War.

A memorial garden was erected at the site for the Australian cavalry killed among the heroic cavalry who signed the First World War in Israel and in its center was placed the statue of the Aboriginal warrior, a visitor center and a museum.

The restored aerial caravan is stationed at the historic train station in Tzemach (Photo: official website, Ziv Ofir)

When Ophir learned that an opportunity had arisen to get a budget for the restoration of Katinka's caravan, he jumped at the chance.

Professor Didi Lynn, a lecturer from the college, and Avi Baltner, a locksmith in the Menahemia colony, were recruited for the task.

For several months the two worked on cold winter nights building the model.

The restoration operation was carried out with the help of the Ministry of Culture, the Council for the Preservation of Heritage Sites in Israel and the Kinneret Academic College.

Although the aerial caravan did not originally reach the plant, it is the last stop on the same mythological railway on which the same carriage wrote a special chapter in its fascinating story.

Last week, a replica of the caravan was placed at a plant station in a festive ceremony.

The ceremony was also attended by one of Katinka's grandchildren who excitedly thanked for bringing up his grandfather's story.

Ophir explained the importance he sees in the reconstruction of that crazy caravan: "In recent years we often talk about innovation, daring, creativity, determination - all of these are reflected in the 'aerial caravan'; it is a story about a strange combination of caravan and plane and one special person who stood "Behind the construction of 'this creature', the engineer Baruch Katinka."

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