In the heart of tourism hotspot Muğla's Dalaman district, a stately building has guarded its secret for decades: What everyone believed to be a train station erroneously placed in the wrong spot was actually constructed from the outset as a hunting lodge.
The structure, located on land belonging to the General Directorate of Agricultural Enterprises (TİGEM), was commissioned in the early 1900s by Abbas Hilmi Pasha, the Ottoman-appointed governor of Egypt. For decades, it was popularly known as a “train station built where no railway exists,” a claim that eventually turned into one of Dalaman’s best-known urban legends.
It has now been clarified that the building was never planned as a train station but was designed and constructed as a hunting lodge and administrative building. The misconception was caused by its architectural resemblance to a railway station and from claims that construction plans for a train station in Alexandria and a hunting lodge in Dalaman had been mixed up.
Former Dalaman Mayor Şevket Durmuş said the claims about mixed-up projects do not reflect the truth. He noted that confusing the projects would not have been possible and that the building was constructed according to the original plan.
“The interior of this building has nothing to do with a train station,” Durmuş said. “Its construction dates back to around 1908, and it was designed as an administrative building and hunting lodge. What I heard from my grandfather is that trains did operate here, but only within the estate for transporting goods.”
Durmuş added that railway tracks once existed within the TİGEM land for internal freight transport and were later dismantled by villagers and others. He said remnants of the rails still exist both on the estate and in private homes.
During the Ottoman period, Abbas Hilmi Pasha brought large numbers of Egyptian and Sudanese workers to Dalaman after the land came under his ownership in 1874. In 1908, he commissioned the construction of a hunting lodge in Dalaman and a railway station in Alexandria, Egypt and entrusted the plans to French architects.
According to popular accounts, the architects mixed up the projects, leading to the construction of a train station-like building in Dalaman. However, this claim has now been dismissed. The building is currently used as a service building by TİGEM.
