Railway Battalion

With the increase in railway lines, the Ottoman Empire took action to train its own personnel. The idea of ​​opening a school in order to train civil servants to work on the railway lines was first discussed in the last quarter of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, a railway battalion was established under the army to train Turkish railwaymen.

Since the railways in the Ottoman Empire were built by foreign companies, non-Muslims were generally employed on the lines.
After the behavior of non-Muslim citizens working on strategically important railways, which reached the stage of betrayal to the state, it was deemed necessary to train personnel among Muslim and Turkish citizens, and İzmir Şimendifer School was established during the First World War.