Treni - Francia: libri illustrati - linee ferroviarie e stazioni

Majorca and Corsica Narrow Gauge - Scenic Journeys on Two Mediterranean Islands

Queste isole spagnole e francesi nel Mar Mediterraneo possiedono entrambe estese reti ferroviarie a scartamento ridotto. Dopo un periodo di declino e minacce di chiusura, stanno ora vivendo una rinascita grazie a materiale rotabile moderno e a un'ampia modernizzazione delle infrastrutture. In netto contrasto, Maiorca ospita anche una ferrovia panoramica elettrificata che utilizza ancora la stessa trazione impiegata da oltre 80 anni.
Questo album documenta le alterne fortune delle reti ferroviarie di queste affascinanti isole, includendo numerose immagini d'epoca oltre a quelle contemporanee.

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French Metre Gauge Survivors : Scenic Journeys Through Rural France

Un tempo la Francia era solcata da una vasta e variegata rete di ferrovie a scartamento metrico. Oggi ne rimangono solo pochi esempi, alcuni dei quali sono solo brevi tratti dei vecchi sistemi.

Oggi queste strade sono in gran parte orientate al turismo. Tuttavia, questi esemplari superstiti rievocano ancora appieno l'atmosfera di un tempo, attraversando la splendida e variegata campagna francese.

Dettagli

Arrêt sur images 1950-1980 - par Jacques Defrance

This book retraces "in pictures" the career of Jacques Defrance, industrial designer at CEM (Cie Electro-Mécanique), better known as the creator of works on SNCF motor equipment, published since 1968 by La Vie du Rail.
For forty-seven years, always accompanied by his faithful camera bodies, Jacques Defrance scoured the French railway network in search of unusual images or new things.

The authors have set out to unearth some 300 unpublished photos from the 9,000 contained in the railway collection. Mainly in black and white, more timidly in colour, they show the sites, machines and eras that Jacques Defrance was fond of, such as the French metric railways, the Breton network, the Corrèze PO, the Canari, the Saint-Gervais, Paris and its suburbs, the end of steam, that of the Bastille line or the arrival of new equipment.

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Au fil du Rhône en train

From the Swiss glaciers to the Camargue, the Rhône, initially a torrent, became a powerful river whose course has now been tamed.
Thanks to the furrow it dug in Switzerland and France, the railway was able to penetrate first into the heart of the Alps, then open up the path to the gates of the Mediterranean and the Orient in the northern regions of France.

The book presents this magnificent waterway and the railway lines that accompany it for almost its entire journey to the sea, with trains only leaving it to reach Marseille in the Bouches du Rhône department.
So, be careful when setting off on a train journey along the Rhône, in the Alps, on the shores of Lake Geneva, between the Massif Central and the Pre-Alps, and in the Provence.

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La Chapelle 1846-2013 : Des machines et des hommes

This book tells the long and rich history of the La Chapelle depot, opened in the mid-19th century by the Compagnie du chemin de fer du Nord, at the foot of the Butte Montmartre, and which closed its doors more than a century and a half later.
This depot shone with its know-how applied to steam locomotives, then to speed service thanks to the famous "big wheels". At the controls, the heroes of the steam era: men with faces blackened with soot, devoted to "their" locomotives.

La Chapelle was then converted to modern traction (diesel, electric) for "speed" traffic and the suburbs. It was finally on January 25, 2013 that the Paris depot was officially closed. Ground Control in 2015, then Grand Train in 2016 are the final episodes of its history.
A railway saga immortalized in this work with exceptional iconography, a tribute to a duo specific to the railway: machines and men.

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La côte d'Azur - Balade en bord de mer 1955-1985

This volume XIX of "Images de trains" invites you to browse an album of railway memories of the Côte d'Azur, between La Ciotat and Vintimille: from the sailors of Toulon to the flamboyant Estérel massif, from the Croisette to the Baie des Anges and from the radiant Principality of Monaco to the Italian border where the Alps taste of the Mediterranean, you will discover the diversity of landscapes and atmospheres that were offered to travelers as far as the Riviera...

The authors stopped at the "Mistral years". The Mistral, undoubtedly the most prestigious train of the SNCF, always at the forefront of technical developments in the areas of comfort and speed, linked Nice to Paris between 1952 and 1982.

To illustrate these rich hours, they drew on the photographic collection of the famous weekly La Vie du Rail and selected the best color shots.
Contemplating with them the Côte d'Azur in the colors of the Mistral is to witness the changes in the landscapes and the railway universe of a region that is still as attractive as ever.

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La France des lignes oubliées - Ces 80 ans qui modifièrent le visage du train en France

At its peak, in the late 1920s, the main French rail network had more than 42,000 kilometers of lines open to passenger traffic, it is less than 30,000 today. This formidable network, which irrigated France even in its most remote corners, shrank like shagreen leather from the 1930s and even more thirty years later, during the great wave of closures.
The priority given to the development of the automobile sounded the death knell for the small lines crisscrossed by two-tone omnibuses. The stations closed, the rails disappeared under wild vegetation, the land lost its train.

This book recounts in detail the inexorable contraction of the French rail network before the partial takeover of traffic by the Regions. Images, maps, figures, testimonies to know everything about these lines that fell asleep in pain on French soil.

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Le chemin de fer de la Baie de Somme

On December 31, 1972, the last departmental network open to travelers in the Somme Bay area disappeared.
However, when one story ends, another begins thanks to a group of young railway enthusiasts who embarked on the takeover of the two Noyelles-Cayeux and Noyelles-Le Crotoy lines in a tourist form.

The only associative structure that manages a tourist railway of this importance in France, the Baie de Somme railway has become a major tourist structure on the Picardy coast, welcoming nearly 130,000 travelers each year on 27 kilometers of rail network.
Tracing this railway epic, the book will also allow the reader to discover the history, geography, biodiversity and heritage of the Baie de Somme throughout the pages and during the journey. In collaboration with the CFBS.

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Les trains de nos campagnes - Années 1960 - Lignes à voie étroite

In the aftermath of the Second World War, secondary railways comprised more than 8,000 kilometres of tracks, most of them narrow gauge, covered by steam trains and railcars serving rural areas neglected by the "main" railway.

But by 1960, these trains had almost all disappeared, victims of the rapid motorisation of the countryside and competition from roads.
The author travelled through most of the surviving networks at that time. His photographs, all unpublished, are a valuable testimony to the changes of that decade.

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Paris-Strasbourg - De la Compagnie de l'Est au TGV

A strategic issue and theatre of conflicts between France and Germany from 1870 to 1945, no other major line has had such a unique and too often dramatic history. Departing from the Gare de l'Est, we speed along at the rhythm of steam towards the Marne, the lands of Champagne, Lorraine and Alsace.
Perhaps you will be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the famous and unforgettable Mountain locomotives of the Compagnie de l'Est...

Jean-Pierre Rigouard is a tireless cartophile. Passionate about the history of the French railway, he could not miss the railway event of 2007: the opening of the high-speed line between Paris and Strasbourg.
The author draws up a panorama that is both historical and technical of the route, stations and machines.

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Paysages ferroviaires français

This album of railway photographs is entirely devoted to the unpublished collection of a man that train enthusiasts know well. An aviation officer working for the Air France company; Guy Rannou was an excellent photographer.
Passionate about the railway world, he crisscrossed France for fifty years to capture snapshots of trains crossing the French landscapes, particularly on secondary lines.

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Sur les rails de Provence - Alpes - Côte d'Azur

This splendid album explores all aspects of the Provençal railway scene, from the major routes of the Rhone Valley, the Côte d'Azur and the TGV Méditerranée to the most daring mountain lines that rush towards Dauphiné and neighbouring Piedmont.
The region also had a large number of secondary railways including the legendary "Train des Pignes".

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Valenciennes-Thionville - La route du fer et du charbon

If there is a legendary line when we talk about freight traffic, Valenciennes - Thionville immediately stands out. A true umbilical cord of French heavy industry, linking two cradles of mining and steelmaking - the North and Lorraine - it has long been the artery carrying the largest tonnage of all French lines, not to mention the few transversal passenger trains such as the famous Calais - Basel.

Georges Marlier tells us about the adventures of this railway, from its construction to the end of steam, without forgetting the two wars where the line found itself in the foreground due to its location near the border.
He reviews the installations (stations, marshalling yards, depots, etc.) as well as the equipment, both from the Northern and Eastern companies and from the SNCF. The work ends with the electrification of the line in the mid-1950s, the first "large-scale" application of single-phase current at industrial frequency that would become the world reference.

Dettagli