FRANCE - Railways & Metros

[EMArg]

New thread for the Railways and Metros of french cities.

[EMArg]

South of France: from Carcassonne to Narbonne





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[EMArg]

Also on the South of France: from Carcassonne to Toulouse-Matabiau





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[EMArg]

Toulouse: Gare de Matabiau




Toulouse waited until the middle of the 19th century for the railway to arrive in the city. In 1853, Émile Pereire and his brother Jacob founded the CF du Midi. Three years later, the line from Bordeaux to Toulouse was opened, it was extended to Sète in 1857. The current passenger building was built between 1903 and 1905, replacing an older and smaller building. The station took the name of the borough it was situated in, an area called Matabiau, named after the martyrdom of Saint Saturnin, mata-bios meaning kill the bull. It was designed by Marius Toudoire (who also designed Bordeaux Station) and was built with stone from the Roman city of Saintes. Like the Midi station in Bordeaux, Matabiau station bears 26 coats of arms on the front of the building of the 26 destinations that Midi served. The station is centred on two main concourses at the front of the station directly linked to each other, with ticket offices, shops and cafés. Underpasses link these concourses to the platforms. The station is connected to the underground Marengo SNCF station on Line A of the Toulouse Metro, accessible from inside and just outside the station.

[EMArg]

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[Busy Bee]

Trés bon

[aquablue]

French HSR system is very nice.

[mousquet]

Not familiar with south western railroads, but links of the type of Toulouse-Narbonne-Carcassonne are only TER (transport express régional).
This is Occitanie's regional railroad network.


https://edito.igstatic.com/155791425...-Occitanie.JPG

Orange is TER lines operated by SNCF. These are the main regional lines widely funded by the national administration.
Green is secondary lines operated (and mostly funded, I guess) by the regional administration itself.

So EMarg and his people rode TER. This is nothing like HSR, guys. It doesn't feel the same at all. As a matter of fact, Toulouse itself is not served by any HSR yet.
It is the hub of the aviation industry in the country; so generally speaking, they don't fancy trains so much over there.

[aquablue]

France is good at trains.

[tdawg]

Had the pleasure of riding the TGV twice while in France on my honeymoon. An excellent system.

[aquablue]

Originally Posted by tdawg

Had the pleasure of riding the TGV twice while in France on my honeymoon. An excellent system.

Nice.. the TGV yeah, I was on it a couple of times as well, it's very smooth and efficient.

[EMArg]

Paris: Gare de Lyon






The Gare de Lyon is one of the six large mainline railway station termini in Paris, France. It handles about 90,000,000 passengers every year, making it the third busiest station of France and one of the busiest of Europe. It is the northern terminus of the Paris–Marseille railway. It is named after the city of Lyon, a stop for many long-distance trains departing here, most en route to the south of France. The station is in the XIIe arrondissement, on the north bank of the river Seine, in the east of Paris. The station is served by high-speed TGV trains to south and eastern France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Spain. The station also hosts regional trains and the RER and also the Gare de Lyon metro station. Main line trains depart from 32 platforms in two distinct halls: Hall 1, which is the older train shed, contains tracks labelled with letters from A to N, while the modern addition of Hall 2 contains tracks which are numbered from 5 to 23. There are a further 4 platforms for the RER underneath the main lines.

[EMArg]

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[EMArg]

Paris: Gare du Nord





The Gare du Nord is one of the six large terminus stations of the SNCF mainline network for Paris, France. It serves train services toward regions north of Paris, along the Paris–Lille railway. Near Gare de l'Est in the 10th arrondissement, the Gare du Nord offers connections with several urban transport lines, including Paris Métro, RER and buses. By the number of travelers, around 222 million per year, it is the busiest railway station in Europe by total passenger numbers. The Gare du Nord is the station for trains to Northern France and to international destinations in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The station complex was designed by the French architect Jacques Hittorff and built between 1861 and 1864.

[EMArg]

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[EMArg]

Paris: Gare de L'Est






The Gare de l'Est, officially Paris-Est, is one of the six large SNCF termini in Paris. It is in the 10th arrondissement, not far from the Gare du Nord, facing the Boulevard de Strasbourg, part of the north-south axis of Paris created by Georges-Eugène Haussmann. It is one of the largest and the oldest railway stations in Paris, the western terminus of the Paris–Strasbourg railway and the Paris–Mulhouse railway which then proceeds to Basel, Switzerland.

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[EMArg]

[EMArg]

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