The Belle Epoque

[ianp]

I came across this academic paper about the development of French railways. It is called "The Belle Époque of the railways: the Freycinet plan and its effects on the French population and economy" :

https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-03045195/document

[Welchester]

How lovely that French railway stations smelt of sunshine and orange.

[jivebunny]

3 minutes ago, Welchester said:

How lovely that French railway stations smelt of sunshine and orange.

 

In sharp contrast to Parisian underground stations then 

[Pacific231G]

Thanks Ian, this Masters Thesis is very interesting. There has long been a great deal of confusion about the distinction between the Freycinet plan with its secondary network of 8 000 kms of lines d'Interet General, and the lines d'Interet Local that developed to about 21 000 kms but all but vanished between the 1930s and 1950s. and this paper does explain that while focussing on the Freycinet lines. (I suppose the nearest British equiivalent would be the distinction between branch lines and light railways but it's  a decidely inexact equivalence) Many if not most of the Freycinet lines lost their passenger services in 1938-1939 but tended to remain open for goods- mostly to serve agriculture- until the late 1980s and beyond whilst the metre gauge d'ILs generally disappared entirely. 

There are a few anomalies in the paper. for example, at least two of the sous-prefectures that he assumes missed out because they were only served by narrow gauge railways were served by d'Interet General lines (The Sud France Nice-Digne line that is still open) and the PO Correze (that isn't)  Those lines just happened to be metre gauge but were still part of the national network.