The Anatolian-Ottoman Rail Company captured by British solders during the military occupation of Anatolia in 1919, was taken back by the Nationalist Forces on March 20, 1920 and that small workshop, which was renamed as Eskişehir Railway Repair Workshop, became an important trump used against the occupying forces by the Nationalist Forces.

General İsmet Pasha stated once in his memories: “My first fundamental duty was to prepare the army. In this respect breeches of cannons, which had been found in various depots in blank tube shapes with their breech plugs removed were renewed in Eskişehir Railway Repair Workshop and I used these cannons in the Sakarya Battle.”

The workshop captured by the Greeks on July 20, 1920 has been infinitely taken back on September 2, 1922. This small repair workshop in the new-formed country paved the way for a technology based economy, which was formerly mainly based on agriculture.

After the National War of Independence Atatürk said: “ The economic war is the main war.” The young Turkish Republic at those times was still dependent on the enemy that he once threw out of the country. All needs of the railways that connect the fields to the markets, mines to the factories, factories to the ports and that form the arteries of the state economy had been met by other countries, primarily Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Czechoslovakia.
In a country without any industrial substructure, one could not even think of locomotive or wagon manufacture.