Jump to content
 

C.F. Domaine de Sologne (main line miniature railway in France)


Pacific231G
 Share

Recommended Posts

A discussion of the difference between a miniature and a model railway on the Channel 4 Model Railway Challenge topic led me to revisit a diagram  that had fascinated me as a youngster in the 1950s edition of Henry Greenly's Model Railways. This was a 600mm gauge "model" of a French main line express corridor coach with its body aproximately 5/8 scale and five four seat compartments(plus a toilet)  instead of the eight six seat compartments of the prototype.

 

post-6882-0-45358600-1516110271_thumb.jpg

 

For many years this drawing was all I knew about but I've discovered that the planned railway it was intended for was featured in some detail in a series of articles in the French Loco-Revue magazine between 1947 and 1949

 

Along with these articles I've been able to find out, from other French sources, more about the Chemin de Fer Domainial de Sologne and René Claude who started to build it. As this is rather off-topic for the Channel 4 topic I'm starting a new one about this railway, that was south of Orleans and never completed and any other examples of a "miniature" rather than conventional "narrow gauge" railway using one of the commonly used narrow gauges such as 600mm to "model" a main line railway rather as the RHDR did in 15" gauge.

post-6882-0-10655600-1516110890_thumb.jpg

 

The planned main line coach was intended to accompany a 600mm gauge "model" of a main line Pacific that Claude acquired

in 1947 but the plans had been drawn up in February 1940, before the occupation. 

 

I'll add to this anything more I discover and encourage others to add information about this or any other such railways.

Edited by Pacific231G
  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

Summary of posts in the Channel 4 topic

 

I was familiar with both narrow gauge and miniature railways but was intrigued by the the idea of a conventional narrow gauge being used for a main line in miniature rather like the RHDR but on a larger scale, enabling main line type corridor coaches  with separate compartments, a toilet and even steam heating.

 

Half a dozen articles from 1947 to 1949 in the French Loco-Revue magazine described the project it was intended for.

 

 M. René Claude- a fairly well know modeller since before the war was planning a railway oriented technical school in the grounds of the large family estate the "Domaine des Etangs Sec"  where he lived. The plan was for a double track main line loop  roughly two and a half kilometres long with loops into stations and a future extension to the nearest main line station about ten kilometres away. There was some idea that it would be used practically to transport timber- it was in a forested area- to the big railway.

 

post-6882-0-69608500-1515888174_thumb.jp

 

The whole thing does look like the miniature railway of a particularly ambitious model engineering society but not disimilar from some of the layouts (usually 0 gauge) featured in Loco-Revue around that time.

.

A 600mm gauge version of a main line Pacific built for a pre-war international exhibition in Belgium, was bought and the train of "express" coaches was designed. Other rolling stock,  would have been more conventionally narrow gauge, quite a  lot of second hand 600mm gauge stock was available at that time but these were to be fitted with side buffers and central screw link couplers. Operation would, like the RHDR, have followed main line practice based on that of SNCF. As well as the Pacific, Claude seems to have acquired an 0-6-0 T from Popineau of a type widely used on contractors' railways.

 

By October 1947 a total of 200-300 metres or track had been laid either side of one of the projected stations by a contractor employed by M. Claude and at least part of the route cleared of trees and levelled. I can't tell from the articles whether this was around the area marked "Station" or  that shown as "Ferme Common" on the plan. 

 

However, an article a year later said that work had been temporarily stopped while "waiting for better times" and it was apparently a period of high inflation which among other things had made the cost of bringing in ballast from quarries prohibitive. 

 

The last article about it was in May 1949 but that was theorising about possilbe rollling stock with nothing about any actual progress on the building and that seems to have been the end of the story. The railway was undoutedly something of a pipe-dream and certainly very ambitious but Loco Revue's owner and editor, Jean Fournereau,  was clearly quite enthusiastic about it.

 

In December of 1949 the first advert appeared by René Claude advertising his services as a modelmaker from the same address (Domaine des Etangs Sec) and these appeared every month in Loco-Revue until August or September 1951 before disappearing. He specialised in scenic materials including model trees and superdetailed models of locos and rolling stock based on commercial products. 

 

I can't find anything later about the railway but from 1950,  Loco-Revue got equally excited about another large scale project by an amateur enthusiast. This was a plan by Jacques Milet, a "greffier" (clerk of the court) and narrow gauge enthusiast with no practical railway experience to build a completely new 60 cm gauge roadside tramway across the Cap Feret peninsula. The idea was to take day trippers arriving by boat from Arcachon on the sheltered side of the Cap across a mile or so of sandy forests to the very fine Atlantic beaches on the other side. Reading Milet's articles, the plan sounds as improbably ambitious as M. Claude's main line training railway. However, Milet did build his railway, it became his life's work  and is still in operation today (well not literally today- it doesn't run in the winter) It does meet a fairly genuine transport need for at least a proportion of its passengers who still use it to get from the landing stage to the beaches.

 

As to what parts of M. Claude's railway were actually built, Google Earth came up with some interesting images in its "historical" sequence. .Most are too tree covered to really make out paths but the first in the dated sequence from 2006 is a more detailed NASA image and you can make out some estate roads and tracks half hidden by trees. There are also some other possible lines that look "interesting" particularly an apparent curve that could correspond to the northern end of the planned double track loop.

 

 

I've now found out rather more about M. Claude and the fate of his railway, not an entirely happy story, and will post that later.

Edited by Pacific231G
Link to post
Share on other sites

The idea of this abandoned railway would fit in well with a well-known French work of fiction set in the area; Le Grandes Meaulnes, by Alain Fournier, a story of pre-WW1 lost innocence. The Sologne is a funny sort of area, at one time being a hunting forest for the King and his courtiers, and these days being long stretches of woodland with very few settlements bigger than a large village. It's the home of the Chemin du Fer du Blanc-Argent, a metre gauge line still offering a commercial service, notably school trains to Romaratin. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't have time to go through the whole story now but will when I get a chance as some French enthusiasts looked at this about a decade ago and one of them who lives in the Sologne was invited to visit the estate by its current owners and found virutally nothing left. An aerial mapping photo from 1949 does show what could be the concrete platform described by M. Claude in one of his articles in the area marked "station" on the plan as well as some track or at least trackbed extending from it.

post-6882-0-29175100-1516488016.jpg

A later survey photo from 1963 shows some sign of this but by then it was very overgrown

 

A much later  NASA image on Google Earth does suggest a path through the trees in the shape of the curve at the north end of the plan but there's no sign of this in the 1949 survey when the area was still clear of trees so I suspect that tree planting was simply carried out to leave a path for the future railway.

 

There are also signs in the 1949 photo of a possible path in the area of the "Ferme Common" .

 

post-6882-0-72402900-1516488075.jpg

 

I now suspect that the only track ever laid was no more than 300metres around the area marked "station" and that was apparently second hand and rather rusty contractors' material that was eventually supposed to be for sidings.

According to its new owners, when Claude had to sell the property in the early 1960s there were only about thirty metres of 600mm gauge track left along with an 0 gauge garden railway and all the rolling stock went to a museum- though that may have been referring to the 0 gauge .

 

I agree with Forest Pine's comments about missing crossovers on Claude's plan but this was only "stage 1". We can speculate on what form a completed railway might have taken given that it's aim was to be a training railway for potential cheminots  both for SNCF (though they were quite able to train their own staff thanks very much) and for "The Colonies" rather than a public attraction.

Edited by Pacific231G
  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Just to tell the rest of the story.

 

Since starting this topic I've been able to find out more about René Claude and his plans for a 600mm "main line" railway. The tale does end rather sadly.

 

René Claude was the son of Georges Claude, a French chemist and inventor who came from a prosperous family and had made his own fortune by developing a commercial method for liquifying air (he was one of the founders of the Air Liquide company which still exists) As this made the inert gases available, he also managed to invent the neon tube and created the first neon lit adverts in France and then in America. 

 

Unfortunately George Claude had a darker side and was involved in right wing monarchist politics before the war. During the war he was, along with a number of other French industrialists, an active supporter of collaboration with the German occupiers and with the Vichy regime of Marshall Petain. In 1945 he was sentenced to life imprisonment and stripped of all his honours but was released in 1950. He died in 1960 at his Paris home at the age of 89. 

 

It was around that time that René Claude (one of three children) was forced to sell the Domaine des Etangs, a beautiful house in the middle of fifty hectares (about 120 acres) of forest. He died, apparently in relative poverty, in January 1982 and in accordance with his last wish, the new owners allowed him to be buried on the estate.  

 

Coming from a very wealthy family René Claude wouldn't as a young man have really needed to work  so, perhaps a little like Arthur Heywood who developed the 15inch "minimum gauge railway"  was free to pursue his own interests. He is described as being whimsical, generous and very kind and as having many railway projects.

Pre-war he was a well known modeller and in the 1930s had been a president of AFAC  the French railway enthusiasts association that used to exhibit regularly at the MRC Easter show. His plans for a 600mm gauge "main line" coach (post#1) dated from 1941 but I've just found a much earlier reference to him in the American Popular Science magazine from March 1931.

 

post-6882-0-96864200-1517236248_thumb.jpg

 

About twelve years ago a French enthusiast living in the region got in touch with the estate's owners and was invited to explore it for any remains of the railway. All he could find were the ruins of the concrete platform for the station buried under brambles and a few earthworks in the forest.  By the time the new owners first became acquainted with René Claude in 1960 only fifteen metres of the 60cm track still remained, the rest, presumably along with any rolling stock, having been sold off to meet living expenses. However, the railway had never been completed nor even been very advanced because the money had quickly ran out.

 

The extensive 0 gauge garden railway, possibly the same one pictured in Popular Science, had gone by 1960 but there was a smaller indoor 0 gauge layout that he dismantled when he sold the estate. After his death this was passed on by his family to a museum in the Paris region which might possibly have been Rambolitrain.

 

I've not been able to find out whether René squandered the family fortune or whether this was lost in litigation and appeals around his father's trial and conviction, but the final outcome is sad conclusion to what would have been, had it come to fruition, a very interesting narrow gauge railway "modelling" the main lines. 

Edited by Pacific231G
Link to post
Share on other sites

Philou here,

 

Quite sad to read the ending - very much a case of 'what might have been'.

 

Mrs P has friends in Romorantin - I shall look out for the Chemin de Fer du Blanc-Argent next time we're over that way.

 

Round here where I live, there are miles and miles of trackbed, bridges, viaducts and stations of a long-gone metre gauge CFD (Chemin de Fer Departemental). My father had collected a great number of illustrated books on this particular system. Started at the turn of the 1900's and all ripped up by 1938. The locos were sold off to Shanghai. There is one photo of one of these locos in the streets of Shanghai.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Philou here,

 

Quite sad to read the ending - very much a case of 'what might have been'.

 

Mrs P has friends in Romorantin - I shall look out for the Chemin de Fer du Blanc-Argent next time we're over that way.

 

Round here where I live, there are miles and miles of trackbed, bridges, viaducts and stations of a long-gone metre gauge CFD (Chemin de Fer Departemental). My father had collected a great number of illustrated books on this particular system. Started at the turn of the 1900's and all ripped up by 1938. The locos were sold off to Shanghai. There is one photo of one of these locos in the streets of Shanghai.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

.

Hi Philip

 

Do you happen to know which départemental system it was round your way?

 

The Blanc-Argent is well worth seeing but, once their season starts again, I'd also really recommend the Train du Bas Berry. This is run by the preservation group SABA who have taken over over the closed southern part of the BA from Lucay-le-Male through Ecueille - where they are headquartered- to Argy. 

 

They used to connect with the SNCF operated section of the BA at Lucay but that has now been further truncated back to Valencay so SABA are looking to take on that stretch of line as well which would give them a terminus in a fairly popular town for visitors.

 

I've visited them twice but a few years ago now and fairly soon after they opened and it was heartening to see such a dynamic group. They had in a very few years completely restored a route that I'd last seen about five years earlier with young trees growing between the rails and its track disappearing into the undergrowth. At that time they were operating with some rather wonderful Verney autorails and a train hauled by a diesel tractor but since 2007 they've also used one of the Corpet-Louvet  0-4-0T contractor's steam locos that used to operate the Noyelles-Le Crotoy section of the Baie de Somme. They now also have a couple of larger steam locos undergoing restoration.

Edited by Pacific231G
Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi David,

 

I thought I'd tag this onto your thread as you seem to have an interest in things SNCF, my great great grandfather (I think I have the generation level correct) on my mother's side built the viaduct at Chaumont plus (so I was told) a number of the viaducts out of Dijon on the Paris line. Unfortunately, I don't think he had anything to do with narrow gauge other than as possibly used in preliminary earthworks and site excavation.

 

Thanks for the info regarding the existing narrow gauge in the Berry. I'll make a point of 'going out for the day' with Mrs P when we're next over that way.

 

I note there is a Corpet-Louvet loco to be seen, I would be interested in seeing that in the flesh, as the locos used here on the former CFD lines were Corpet-Louvet 0-6-0s (though I would need to confirm that in my father's books, which are not here with me).

 

Regards,

 

Philip

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...