To Iraqi railway employees it was known as “the special train”. Even though Saddam seldom used it, the bed linen on board was changed each day and the restaurant car was stocked with his favourite whisky.

“The train was kept there at the ready,” said Rick Degman, an American expert employed by the former governing coalition authority to help restore the Iraqi railway network. “It was constantly at his disposal — a whole train just for him.”

According to Abbas Jabar, the stationmaster at Baghdad central, the train had gold fittings. “The cutlery was all gold, I remember,” he said, “and there were pictures of Saddam on the walls.

“Of course in those days there were pictures of Saddam everywhere — even in the station lavatories.”

Two German-made engines and nine carriages imported from France were reserved for the use of the dictator. The engines have already been incorporated into the rest of Iraq’s limping railway network, but The Sunday Times was able to view some of Saddam’s former carriages in a siding at the Baghdad station.

There were ordinary sleeper compartments for the guards and a saloon and sleeping compartment for Saddam. It had been stripped bare by looters at the end of the war. “Nothing was left,” said Jabar. “Many fine fixtures were stolen.”

Opinion is divided about how often the famously paranoid Saddam boarded the train. There were suggestions that he used it more to confuse his enemies and would-be assassins than than he did for personal travel.

“Sometimes he would put his guards on the train but it was just a decoy journey,” said Ahmed Mazen, one of the railway managers. “This would make people think he was on the train, while in fact he was still in his palace.”

Louai, a train driver, was put at the controls of the special train on one occasion when he believed Saddam was on board.

“Some of Saddam’s guards stayed with me in the cabin,” he said. “They were saying, ‘Do this, do that, slow down, speed up, stop here’. I never actually saw Saddam, though.”

Others believe that Saddam, who is awaiting trial on charges of war crimes and genocide, used the train only once — to travel north to Mosul in the 1980s.

Whatever the case, there is precious little goodwill towards him among rail staff. “He stole from the people,” said Jabar. “This train is an example of that. Only he could use it. What a waste!” The railway system worked quite well in the days of the dictator but collapsed after last year’s American-led invasion. Looters ransacked not only Saddam’s finely appointed compartments but most of the rail network throughout Iraq.

“Anything that could be carted off was carted off by looters,” said Degman, who worked for America’s Amtrak rail company before volunteering for a job with the Iraqi reconstruction team.

“Don’t ask me why anyone would walk off with the master cylinder of a Chinese locomotive, but they did.”

America is funnelling £150m of reconstruction aid into the rail network, which was started by the British after the first world war. Some of the money is being spent on refurbishing the British-built Baghdad station, where the two clock towers and a giant chandelier in the domed entrance hall make it an imposing landmark. “It is one of the most impressive buildings in Baghdad,” said Degman.

In the heyday of Iraqi rail travel in the early 1900s trains went from Baghdad to Istanbul and linked to the Orient Express for connections to Paris and London. The service deteriorated in the 1990s because of United Nations sanctions, although Saddam did spend large sums building a new station in his home town of Tikrit. It is now running at just 5% of its pre-war capacity.

Besides the amount of equipment looted after the war, railway carriages and engines are regularly damaged or destroyed in attacks by pro-Saddam rebels and bandits.

“Terrorism and criminality is a big obstacle,” said Isa Omran Salman, the train drivers’ manager in Baghdad, who complains that “shootings, bombings and even rockets” are being used to derail his wagons.

He said four drivers had been killed and several injured in attacks over the past few months. “They are martyrs,” he said, holding up photographs of two of them.

Some of the engines and carriages at the station are riddled with bullet holes. Ali Qasem, a driver, said he was often shot at while carrying cargo containers to Baghdad from the southern port of Basra.

“It’s when they fire rocket-propelled grenades that you have a problem,” he said. “And a bomb on the railway line can cause a derailment.”

New engines have been delivered from Russia and will soon go into service, said Salman. “We want to get back to work as soon as we can,” he added.

As for Saddam’s private carriages, they will be put into regular service. “They will serve the people,” said Salman, “and not just one tyrant.”

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