 This 13-km-long section was converted into and later incorporated into the new Palestine Railways main line, which opened to passenger service on 1 November 1920, and linked El Kantara, Egypt via Gaza City, Majdal (Ashkelon), Lydda and Hadera to Haifa.A whole new, much more direct, standard gauge railway section was built from Majdal via Isdud (Ashdod) and Yibna to Lydda; one of the purposes for the new route was to enable shipment of citrus fruits from orchards around Rehovot to the port of Haifa.The Tehran Children—a group of 1230 Jewish refugees from Poland, mostly children, who escaped in 1939 to USSR, then in 1942 to Iran, then brought by the Jewish Agency for Israel by sea to Suez, and from there on a train to the Yishuv—travelled the whole length of the Lod–Ashkelon railway, stopping at Rehovot railway station on February 18, 1943, before continuing further north.