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French Minories


Doric
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Good morning

I am currently working on my "permanent" layout with an "L" shaped site based on CJ Freezer's Minories plan. During research to help set out the lines, I came across a picture of a French Minories at Gare de la Bastille. (see below)

 

post-32981-0-64118100-1514895487_thumb.jpg

 

The plan showed a two track (one up and one down) access along a viaduct over 1 kilometre long into 6 platform terminus with a 3 road locomotive shed. The plan curves as my layout will have to, so it is instructive. Throughout the life of the terminus, it was steam only but as there is no turning facility, it used only tank locos to pull the trains.

 

post-32981-0-49650100-1514895779_thumb.jpg

 

At its height in the 1930's, it managed 30 million passengers a year, commuters in the week and Parisians away to the country at weekends. It did not carry goods except for parcels and coal for the locos apart from one exception. The vineyards around Paris failed in 1897 due to a bug eating the vines (phylloxera) so the farmers changed to growing roses. At the end, the Terminus was handling up to 1 million roses a day bound for the market at Les Halles.

The tank locos started with 2-4-0T, through 0-6-2T and 2-6-2T to a whopping 2-8-2T (see photo with acknowledgement to Flickr)

 

post-32981-0-17567200-1514896342.jpg

 

Electric traversers were installed to cope with larger trains but the terminus declined from the 1940's due to an expansion of the Paris Metro along the same route. It finally closed in 1969 and the terminus was demolished in 1984 to make way for the Opera Bastille. The viaduct remains intact and is used for shops and cafes.

 

 

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Than

 

Some coverage here.

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/78492-minories-holborn-viaduct/?p=2611071

Don't worry about not spotting it as it is buried half-way through a different thread. ;)
 

 

Some coverage here.

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/78492-minories-holborn-viaduct/?p=2611071

Don't worry about not spotting it as it is buried half-way through a different thread. ;)

Welcome to RMWeb, I look forward to seeing how this develops.

 

Thanks for your kind welcome and for the link. The Gare de la Bastille is such a remarkable and short (34 miles) railway.

I was amazed at the Bidel carriages (see photo)

post-32981-0-01680600-1515179169_thumb.jpg

and pleased to see the viaduct is in beautiful condition and apparently well used today.

post-32981-0-71012200-1515179321_thumb.jpg

 

This sort of detail is inspirational.

 

 

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Looks like a great basis for a minories style layout. I found this vid on youtube, it's in french but there are some great clips of the station from 3 minutes onwards. 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Good morning

I am currently working on my "permanent" layout with an "L" shaped site based on CJ Freezer's Minories plan. During research to help set out the lines, I came across a picture of a French Minories at Gare de la Bastille. (see below)

 

attachicon.gifCH3-33 0136-A20-Bastille 24 juin 1961..JPG

 

The plan showed a two track (one up and one down) access along a viaduct over 1 kilometre long into 6 platform terminus with a 3 road locomotive shed. The plan curves as my layout will have to, so it is instructive. Throughout the life of the terminus, it was steam only but as there is no turning facility, it used only tank locos to pull the trains.

 

attachicon.gifbastille_plan.jpg

 

At its height in the 1930's, it managed 30 million passengers a year, commuters in the week and Parisians away to the country at weekends. It did not carry goods except for parcels and coal for the locos apart from one exception. The vineyards around Paris failed in 1897 due to a bug eating the vines (phylloxera) so the farmers changed to growing roses. At the end, the Terminus was handling up to 1 million roses a day bound for the market at Les Halles.

The tank locos started with 2-4-0T, through 0-6-2T and 2-6-2T to a whopping 2-8-2T (see photo with acknowledgement to Flickr)

 

attachicon.gifimage006.jpg

 

Electric traversers were installed to cope with larger trains but the terminus declined from the 1940's due to an expansion of the Paris Metro along the same route. It finally closed in 1969 and the terminus was demolished in 1984 to make way for the Opera Bastille. The viaduct remains intact and is used for shops and cafes.

Hi Doric, have you been reading my Continental Modeller (Feb & March 2011) and RMF articles about Bastille? I've been fascinated by the station since discovering it a few months after it closed but with everything apparently still intact so it would be great to see someone in Britain actually building a layout based on it. I have been in touch with a French enthusiast who has built a layout based on Bastille and he was also the author of the most authoritative book on the line. Bastille was unusual in only serving one line (though originally it was going to be a mainline terminus) so it became a bit of a private world. Bastile was the smallest terminus in Paris but also remained more or less as originally built without the huge expansion of the other termini

 

The "bidels" in your photo were the last to be used in France, on the short and very steep Enghien-Montmorency line just to the north of Paris. That closed in 1954 a few years after they had finally disappeared from the Ligne de Vincenne out of Bastille. The "bidels" had replaced earlier four-wheel coaches with an open upper deck -absolute death traps- and from the mid 1940s were gradually replaced in turn by ex DR bogie coaches seized from Germany (the coaches seen in your photo of Bastille in your original post, .

 

The fifty  powerful 131TB Prairies that had been built specially for the line in 1925 (Hornby-Acho produced a model) were gradually replaced during the early 1960s by push-pull fitted 141TBs (2-8-2Ts). cascaded, with their trains, from the Gare de l'Est suburban services when these were electrified. The 141TBs operated the line until it closed but push-pull operation was far less interesting than the sheer ballet of locos coming off the front of inbound trains and working their way to the head of trains they were to take out not much later. This operation was very much a "super Minories" but  with a very cleverly designed track layout that enabled simultaneous "up" and "down" moves to and from any two of the five (not six) platform roads as well as light engone moves all packed into a very short space and with no reverse curves (enabling far sharper than normal points with a 1:7.5 crossing angle to be used). If they're of use to you I've got plans of the interior arrangements of the station as well as its always mechanical signallng .   

 

Unfortunately, enthusiasts largely ignored the station and the steam operated Ligne de Vincennes until closure became imminent so most photos and film of the station only show it in its short and final push-pull era.  After a boom in commuter traffic during the 1920s the decline in traffic really started in the early 1930s with the effects of the Great Depression as well as competition from new Metro lines, trams and buses. The Chemin de Fer de l'Est even sought permission to close the line completely and, though this was refused, when SNCF took it over it promptly closed passenger services on the outer rural part of the line. Despite a wartime reprieve, the whole line beyond Boissy-St.Leger was closed to passengers in 1953. After the war plans for a  "high speed metro" were revived and these would use part of the ligne de Vincennes out to Boissy-St Leger. It was the long delays in starting this project that enabled Bastille a swansong lasting for over twenty years and, without any modernisation,  kept it as something of a living museum until it finally closed. Most of the line was electrified to become part of the first RER line but the first few kilometres including Bastille and a couple of other stations were closed. 

Edited by Pacific231G
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