Loose_Grip/Pete's photos with the keyword: SNCF

A Blast from the Past. A snowy everyday scene in eastern France in 1969. An unidentified SNCF 140C 2-8-0 reversing north away from Verdun railway station is observed from the Avenue de Mort-Homme overbridge. HFF to everyone. Have a great weekend. Best appreciated in large format.

French commuter steam at Paris Gare du Nord as 141TC39 (ex-ETAT 42.039) departs rapidly northwards. These big 2-8-2 tanks, built by Fives-Lille in 1922, were impressive machines & at this time they were working the very intensive suburban services push & pull, smokebox first, out of Paris. While my then girlfriend had lectures on her year ahead as a French assistant in Verdun I hung around Gare du Nord & Gare de la Bastille taking in the Gallic steam atmosphere. The girlfriend ended up married to a frenchman, steam disappeared & the TGV arrives at these platforms now. C'est la vie!

Verdun station in the snow. The semaphore signal is pulled off & North British 2-8-0 140C246, built in Glasgow in 1917, slowly pulls away light engine by the bridge prior to dropping on to its cement train in the station to the left & departing tender first around the bend in the distance to the north. These trains still ran in August 1972 when I passed through Verdun again & lasted until September 1975 I believe. A locomotive of this class, 287, pulled the last regular steam train on the SNCF between Troyes & Sainte Colombe on 24th September 1975. According to AJECTA who have restored 231 there are eight of these engines preserved, 246 is not one of them. I participated in several railtours pulled by 140C231 in the late 1980s when I lived in Paris - must scan some of those photos.

SNCF 9200 class Bo-Bo 1.5kV DC electrics BB-9272 and BB-9266 stand at the head of their trains in the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris.

L'Etat pacific 231G558 races through the darkness of Villepreux station southwest of Paris with the returning Rouen - Paris Austerlitz steam special.

This IFC tour was headed by SNCF 4-6-0 230G 353 and traversed all the sections of the Petite Ceinture that were still in place in 1985. Not that I really knew where I was as my knowledge of the geography of Paris was slim to non-existant at the time. This was the disused station of Avenue de Saint-Ouen in the north of Paris. HFF and keep safe.

Candice Renoir, Manager Information et Services, whistle in hand, waves off a westbound train from Antibes station.

Dawn over the empty platforms of the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

140C231, a former Chemin de fer de l'État, and subsequently Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF) engine, was built by North British of Glasgow in 1916. The engine is preserved by AJECTA who organised a steam special to Troyes from Gare de l'Est in Paris running via Melun, Montereau and Flamboin. The engine came off the train at Flamboin for water.

SNCF 141TB 2-8-2T 463 departs Paris Gare de la Bastille station with cylinder cocks wide open. Bastille was the terminus of the 54.1 km long line to Vincennes and Verneuil-l'Étang. This was my first visit to Paris or France. No sign of any greenery in those days but today the Promenade Plantée is a major tourist site bustling with walkers who can follow the line eastwards for 4.5km. The station itself is the site of l'Opera de la Bastille. Interestingly when I lived in Paris in the 1980s I told my french co-workers that there had been a station here until 1969 & I was not believed at first! "C'est pas vrai"!!

The fireman of SNCF 141TC6 fails to close the water valve quick enough! Instead of commuter tanks, TGVs arrive & depart from these platforms 45 years later !

French steam SNCF 141-TD-740 on a special passenger train at Meymac station. 141-TD-740 was built in 1932 by la Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de l'Est for suburban services in Paris. It was later transferred to the Western Region & worked out of Gare Saint-Lazare until electrification in 1967. Withdrawn from SNCF in 1968 it was chosen for preservation at the Mulhouse Railway Museum but after languishing for 14 years out in the open it was deemed irreparable and was sold. C.F.T.L.P., Chemin de Fer Touristique Limousin - Périgord, purchased the engine in 1982 and it was restored to working order. It was classified as a "monuments historiques au titre de la préservation du patrimoine industriel" by ministerial decree in 1987. The CFTLP still run special trains in SW France the next being 23rd/24th June - see: www.trainvapeur.com/programmes/programme.htm for details.

Paris Gare du Nord 2-8-2T 141TC12 departs September 1969. A second 141TC simmers in the adjacent platform on the left. All the atmosphere of a main line capital terminus. With the services out of Gare de la Bastille these were the last suburban steam trains in France. Quite a change from the Eurostars that arrive at these platforms today. My girlfriend of the time studied French at Aberystwyth University & was in Paris for an induction course at the Sorbonne to prepare for her year as a teaching assistant in Verdun. While she studied I photographed. She obviously took the course very seriously as she ended up marrying a frenchman! Still I took my photography seriously too & I still have a liking for french steam, paticularly these modern looking tanks.