History of rail transport in France - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

This article is part of the history of rail transport by country series

The history of rail transport in France dates from the first French railway in 1832 to present-day enterprises such as the AGV

Automotrice à grande vitesse

The Automotrice à grande vitesse ' is an Alstom train intended as the successor to France’s TGV high-speed trains; the name stands for automotrice à grande vitesse, or ‘high-speed self-propelled carriage’...

Beginnings

During the 19th century, railway construction began in France with short mineral

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

lines. The building of the main French railway system did not begin until after 1842, when a law legalised railways.

French railways started later and developed more slowly than those in certain other countries. While the first railway built in France started operation in 1832, not long after the first line had opened in Britain

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

, French progress failed to keep pace over the next decade. Thus France quickly fell behind Germany, Belgium and Switzerland in terms of trackage per person. The rapid growth in the United States and in the United Kingdom also seriously outdistanced that in France. Circumstances did not favour a start as early and as successful as Britain's, because Britain generally had a higher level of industrialisation. Other more comparable nations, such as Belgium, embarked on large railway-building projects soon after the technology appeared. France also suffered the handicap of the destruction and turbulence of the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

and the subsequent process of rebuilding, which also hindered the development of railways. It took a full decade to begin railway construction on a national scale.

France's history and level of development almost certainly account for this delay. France's economy in 1832 had not developed sufficiently to support a national railway network. The limited iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

industry for many years forced French railways to import many of their rails from England at great cost. French coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

supplies also remained under-developed compared to those of England and Belgium. Until these complementary industries developed, French railways were at an economic disadvantage compared to those of other states.

Another obstacle to French railway development was the powerful opposition to the changes that railways would bring. For example, in 1832, the Rouen

Rouen

Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...

Chamber of Commerce

Chamber of commerce

A chamber of commerce is a form of business network, e.g., a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community...

opposed a rail link between Rouen and Paris, arguing it would be detrimental to agriculture, hurt the traditional way of life

Personal life

Personal life is the course of an individual's life, especially when viewed as the sum of personal choices contributing to one's personal identity. It is a common notion in modern existence—although more so in more prosperous parts of the world such as Western Europe and North America...

, and impinge upon the business

Business

A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

of the canal

Canal

Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

s and river

River

A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including...

s. This last argument emerged commonly throughout France. Unlike Russia or Germany, which had no well-developed canal systems, France had a great deal of capital invested in water-borne transport. These interests saw the railways as dangerous competition. The origins of this opposition stem from France's geography. France was naturally endowed with many navigable waterway

Waterway

A waterway is any navigable body of water. Waterways can include rivers, lakes, seas, oceans, and canals. In order for a waterway to be navigable, it must meet several criteria:...

s, and also with much terrain suitable for the construction of canals. Much of France also lies not far from the coast, and coastal shipping successfully and cheaply carried much trade. Thus, the interests which profited from canals, river, and coastal shipping all used their sway in government to limit the construction of railways. While other countries, such as Britain, already utilised canals and coastal shipping well, these nations had no government-controlled railways, and thus the vested interests of water-borne trade were less able to oppose new competition.

In France, existing interests combined with popular worries about the introduction of railways, especially concerning their safety. While those in opposition to railway development certainly remained a minority, their presence was larger in France than in most other industrialising nations. Since French rail development depended on government initiatives, French opponents had a clearer target to oppose than in countries where completely private companies constructed new railways.

The central involvement of government in French railways also slowed their construction, as it took time to forge a national railway policy. Under the July Monarchy

July Monarchy

The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...

, France became a far more democratic state than most others in Europe. While most of the numerous individual German states had strong central authorities, decisions in France needed to survive lengthy debates in parliament. France also exhibited considerable internal divisions within the state. Belgium, with its extremely unified political class

Political class

Political class, or political elite is a concept in comparative political science originally developed by Italian political theorist theory of Gaetano Mosca . It refers to the relatively small group of activists that is highly aware and active in politics, and from whom the national leadership is...

just after independence (1830), could quickly embark on elaborate railway projects. France, however, remained long divided between liberals

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

, conservatives

Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

, royalists and democrat

Democracy

Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...

s, with laissez-faire liberals consistently holding a great deal of parliamentary power

Power (sociology)

Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...

. All of the parties supported some form of governmental rail initiative, but they all had differing visions of the shape of that initiative. The parliament thus rejected all major rail projects before 1842, and during this period France steadily fell behind the nations that had reached quick consensus on railway policy.

The French rail system could not develop successfully without the involvement of the state

Sovereign state

A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

. Unlike Great Britain or the United States, France had no large substantial industrial base willing to pay for railways to bring its products to new markets. French investment capital also lagged considerably behind the amounts available in Great Britain. Early troubles, such as the failed Paris to Rouen line, only reinforced the deep conservatism of the French banks. French private industry had not the strength to construct a railway industry

Industry

Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...

unassisted by government. Thus, during the period of inaction by the government before 1842, the French built only small and scattered railway lines.

The eventual relationship created between the French rail system and the government formed a compromise between two competing options:

the completely laissez-faire free-market system that had created Britain's elaborate rail network
a government-built and government-controlled railway, such as had grown up in Belgium.

France employed a mixture of these two models to construct its railways, but eventually turned definitively to the side of government control. The relationships between the government and private rail companies became complicated, with many conflicts and disagreements between the two groups.

Government intervention

The 1842 agreement proved the most important piece of railway legislation. It aided the companies by having the department of the Ponts et Chaussées do most of the plan

Plan

A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with timing and resources, used to achieve an objective. See also strategy. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions, through which one expects to achieve a goal...

ning and engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

work for new lines. The government would assist in securing the land, often by expropriation. The government also agreed to pay infrastructure

Infrastructure

Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...

costs, building bridges, tunnels and track bed. The private companies would then furnish the tracks, stations and rolling stock

Rolling stock

Rolling stock comprises all the vehicles that move on a railway. It usually includes both powered and unpowered vehicles, for example locomotives, railroad cars, coaches and wagons...

, as well as pay the operating costs.

This general policy, masked many exceptions and additions. The most successful companies, especially the Compagnie du Nord, would often build their own lines themselves in order to avoid the complications of going through government. For instance, during the economic boom period of the 1850s, the national government had to pay only 19 percent of the costs of railway construction. Other less successful lines, such as the Midi, would often need more assistance from the government to remain in operation. The same proved true during recessions, such as in 1859, when the railway lines gained a new agreement to save them from bankruptcy

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

. In exchange for funding part of the construction of rail lines, the French government set maximum rates that the companies could charge. It also insisted that all government traffic must travel at a third of standard costs.

The expectation that the government would eventually nationalise the rail system formed another important element in French railway legislation. The original agreement of 1842 leased the railway lines to the companies for only 36 years. Napoleon III

Napoleon III of France

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte...

extended these leases to 99 years soon after he came to power. That the rail companies only operated on leases paved the way for the nationalisation of the French rail lines under the socialist government of the 1930s.

The French rail policy, once put in place, had its deficiencies, but one certainly cannot consider it a failure, and other powers attempting to encourage rail developments adopted many aspects of the French railway laws. The bureaucratisation and influence of special interests associated with all governments, even those of corporations, also negatively affected the French railways. However, the French rail system had failed to grow on its own and required government intervention to expand successfully. While the alleged intrusion of government into the railway sector caused problems, it also proved necessary and inevitable.

Unlike in countries where the construction of railways became a field for private enterprise, the state constructed the bulk of the French railway system, and magnanimously invited private companies to operate the lines under lease

Lease

A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the lessee to pay the lessor for use of an asset. A rental agreement is a lease in which the asset is tangible property...

s (of up to 99 years). France's railways form a somewhat unusual case in that they have never been privately owned. The state guaranteed the dividend

Dividend

Dividends are payments made by a corporation to its shareholder members. It is the portion of corporate profits paid out to stockholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, that money can be put to two uses: it can either be re-invested in the business , or it can be distributed to...

s of the railway operating companies, and in exchange took two-thirds of any greater profits

Profit (accounting)

In accounting, profit can be considered to be the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market whatever it is that is accounted as an enterprise in terms of the component costs of delivered goods and/or services and any operating or other expenses.-Definition:There are...

.

The close relationship between the rail companies and government has much to do with French history. France had long had a large and elaborate bureaucracy

Bureaucracy

A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...

and governmental structure that regulated many areas of French life. This bureaucracy survived the revolutionary period intact and played an important role in every government that ruled France in the nineteenth century. Thus, when railways arose, there already existed well-established governmental structures and procedures that could easily expand to encompass railway regulations as well. This regulatory régime

Regime

The word regime refers to a set of conditions, most often of a political nature.-Politics:...

, through the profession

Profession

A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain....

al and powerful department of the Ponts et Chaussées, had very close control over the construction of roads, bridges and canals in France; therefore, it was inevitable that the new railways would also fall under the government's close scrutiny.

Other reasons also led the French government to control its railways closely. Unlike the United Kingdom or the United States, France as a European continental power had pressing military/strategic

Strategy

Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. In military usage strategy is distinct from tactics, which are concerned with the conduct of an engagement, while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked...

needs from its railways, needs which a private sector might not provide. The French government constructed long stretches of strategic railway

Strategic railway

A strategic railway is a railway proposed or constructed primarily for military strategic purposes, as opposed to the usual purpose of a railway, which is the transport of civilian passengers or freight. Although the archetypal strategic railway would be one constructed solely as part of a...

s in eastern France along the German border that served strategically crucial ends, but lacked economic viability. "Pure" private economic interests would not have constructed these routes on their own, so France used government rewards and pressure to encourage the rail companies to build the needed lines. (The German and Russian Empires also had widespread strategic railway systems that private companies would not have built appropriately.)

The first completed lines radiated out of Paris, connecting France's major cities to the capital. These lines still form the backbone of the French railway system. By the 1860s, workers had completed the basic structure of the network, but they continued to build many minor lines during the late 19th century to fill in the gaps .

Government involvement in the railroads did mean that the French rail system became based on a very inefficient design. By 1855, the many original small firms had coalesced into six large companies, each having a regional monopoly in one area of France. The Nord

Chemin de Fer du Nord

Chemin de Fer du Nord , often referred to simply as the Nord company, was a rail transport company created in September 1845, in Paris, France. It was owned by among others de Rothschild Frères of France, N M Rothschild & Sons of London, England, Hottinger, Laffitte and Blount...

, Est, Ouest

Chemins de Fer de l'Ouest

The Compagnie des chemins de fer de l'Ouest , often referred to simply as L'Ouest or Ouest, was an early French railway company.- Birth of the company :...

, Paris-Orléans, Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée (PLM), and the Midi

Chemin de Fer du Midi

The Chemin de Fer du Midi, often abbreviated to CF du Midi, was an early French railway company.In 1934 it merged with the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans to become part of the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans et du Midi ....

lines divided the nation into strict corridors of control. Difficulties arose in that the six large monopolies, with the exception of the Midi Company, all connected to Paris, but did not link together anywhere else in the country. The French railway map comprised a series of unconnected branches running out of Paris. While this meant that trains served Paris well, other parts of the country were not served as well. For instance, one branch of the Paris-Orléans Line ended in Clermont-Ferrand

Clermont-Ferrand

Clermont-Ferrand is a city and commune of France, in the Auvergne region, with a population of 140,700 . Its metropolitan area had 409,558 inhabitants at the 1999 census. It is the prefecture of the Puy-de-Dôme department...

, while Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

stood on the PLM Line. Thus any goods or passengers requiring transportation from Lyon to Clermont-Ferrand in 1860 needed to take a circuitous route via Paris of over seven hundred kilometers, even though a mere hundred and twenty kilometers separated the two cities.

This grave inefficiency lead to great problems in the Franco-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

(1870 - 1871). The German railway lines, inter-connected in a grid-like fashion, proved far more efficient at advancing troops and supplies to the front than the French one. "Combien nous a été funeste l'absence de lignes transversales [...] unissant nos grandes artères" reported a military officer to the parliamentary inquiry on France's defeat.

The arrangement of the lines also hurt France's economy. Shipping costs between regional centres became greatly inflated. Thus many cities specialised in exporting their goods to Paris, as trans-shipment to a second city would double the price.

France ended up with this regressive arrangement for a number of reasons. Paris formed the undisputed capital of France, and many viewed it as the capital of Europe. To French railway planners, it seemed only natural that all the lines should involve the metropolis. By contrast Germany ended up with a far superior system because it had little unity and many centers vying for preeminence. Thus a variety of rail centres arose. Berlin, Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, and the Rhine areas all had links to each other.

The French railway lines also exhibited a high degree of centralisation because plan

Plan

s dictated this. Unlike Britain and America, France had a central government which greatly influenced the layout and the planning of the railways. This Paris-centric government had minimal local representation, especially in the bureaucracy. The Ponts et Chaussées department that supervised the railways remained thoroughly Parisian. Because of strong governmental and administrative influence, all six of the French railway companies had their headquarters in Paris. This occurred not only because of the unquestioned centrality of Paris, but also because the rail companies always remained in close contact with the French government, and needed bases in Paris to ensure positive relations.

Nineteenth-century Britain largely lacked intensive government interference in the railways. Railway companies thus experienced less pressure to centre their lines on London, and also less necessity for each company to cultivate such close links to the centre of political power. In England, for instance, local businesses financed and promoted the Stockton & Darlington and Liverpool & Manchester lines. In France, cities like Lyon

Lyon

and Bordeaux

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

did not have many wealthy investors - capital emanated almost exclusively from Paris. This concentration of capital in Paris also contributed to the concentration of the railway system in the metropolis.

The most important of the railway operating companies during this period included:

Chemin de Fer de l'Est
Chemin de Fer du Nord
Chemin de Fer du Nord
Chemin de Fer du Nord , often referred to simply as the Nord company, was a rail transport company created in September 1845, in Paris, France. It was owned by among others de Rothschild Frères of France, N M Rothschild & Sons of London, England, Hottinger, Laffitte and Blount...
Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée
Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée
The Compagnie des chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée was a French railway company ....
Chemin de Fer Paris-Orléans
Chemin de Fer du Midi
Chemin de Fer du Midi
The Chemin de Fer du Midi, often abbreviated to CF du Midi, was an early French railway company.In 1934 it merged with the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans to become part of the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans et du Midi ....

By 1914 the French railway system had become one of the densest and most highly-developed in the world, and had reached its maximum extent of around 60000 km (37,282.4 mi). About one third of this mileage comprised narrow gauge lines.

Following the First World War, France received significant additions to its locomotive and wagon fleet as part of the reparations

World War I reparations

World War I reparations refers to the payments and transfers of property and equipment that Germany was forced to make under the Treaty of Versailles following its defeat during World War I...

from Germany required by the Versailles Treaty. In addition the network of the Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine

Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine

The Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine were the first railways owned by the German Empire.They emerged in 1871, after France had ceded the region of Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire under the terms of the peace treaty following the Franco-Prussian War...

was taken over by France when the Alsace-Lorraine

Alsace-Lorraine

The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...

region, which had been under German control since the Franco-Prussian War, was returned to her.

Nationalisation

By the 1930s, road

Road transport

Road transport or road transportation is transport on roads of passengers or goods. A hybrid of road transport and ship transport is the historic horse-drawn boat.-History:...

competition began to take its toll on the railways, and the rail network needed pruning. The narrow gauge lines suffered most severely from road competition; many thousands of miles of narrow gauge lines closed during the 1930s. By the 1950s the once extensive narrow gauge system had practically become extinct. Many minor standard gauge lines also closed. The French railway system today has around 40000 km (24,854.9 mi) of track.

Many of the private railway operating companies began to face financial difficulties. In 1938 the socialist government fully nationalised the railway system and formed the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais
SNCF
The SNCF , is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network...

(SNCF). Regional authorities have begun to specify schedules since the mid of the 1970s with general conventions between the regions and the SNCF since the mid of the 1980s.

From 1981 onwards, a newly-constructed set of high-speed

High-speed rail

High-speed rail is a type of passenger rail transport that operates significantly faster than the normal speed of rail traffic. Specific definitions by the European Union include for upgraded track and or faster for new track, whilst in the United States, the U.S...

LGV

LGV may stand for:* Large Goods Vehicle in Europe.* Lymphogranuloma venereum* Lignes à Grande Vitesse, French high-speed rail lines:** LGV Atlantique** LGV Est** LGV Interconnexion Est** LGV Nord** LGV Méditerranée** LGV Picardie** LGV Rhône-Alpes...

(Lignes à Grande Vitesse) lines linked France's most populated areas with the capital, starting with Paris-Lyon. In 1994, the Channel Tunnel

Channel Tunnel

The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...

opened, connecting France and Great Britain by rail under the English Channel

English Channel

The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...