DAMASCUS, Syria — For Younes al-Nasr, a lifelong train lover, the Hejaz railway station here in the heart of the Syrian capital is a repository of shelved ambitions.

Every day, Mr. Nasr, 68, a Transportation Ministry employee, pads around his offices in the Ottoman-era building, where light filters through red, yellow and blue stained glass. He imagines the past — the few short years a century ago when the place bustled with travelers headed for Mecca. And he pictures the future — the grand plans to connect the site to an expanded suburban railway network, allowing commuters to disembark in the center of town and restoring the landmark station to life.

But that will have to wait until after the war. For now, the only evidence of those ambitions is an enormous pit out back. There, workers dug tunnels from outlying stations and began the foundation of a 12-story shopping mall over the tracks, before the country convulsed in conflict three years ago, bringing construction, and eventually Syria’s entire railway system, to a halt. Even here at the Hejaz station, the war has encroached; a few months ago, a mortar shell fired by insurgents struck the busy square just outside, killing 12 people.

To Mr. Nasr, the shutdown is only the latest contraction of the region’s horizons. As borders and conflicts proliferated over the past 100 years, they cut rail ties that symbolized the lost links of business and society that once knitted the Levant, and the wider Middle East, together.