Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture
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Photo: J.M. Schomburg 1997.
The Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture (French for "little belt railway") was a Parisian railway that, from 1852, was a circular connection between Paris' main railroad stations to the inside of Paris' former city fortifications. In a state of abandon since 1934, its rails and a few stations still remain along much of its path, and the future of its yet-unurbanized terrain is the subject of much debate today. Many French amateurs of steam travel look to the Petite Ceinture as a still-surviving element of bygone era, as there are many associations existing today whose aim is to protect the abandoned railway and its remaining stations as a national heritage.
Creation
The mid-1800s was a divided era for France. Its fear of the Prussians made it build walls to protect its capital to the outside world, but the centralised government wanted to use the latest technological rail developments to control France’s cross-country commerce through a web of railways that had Paris as a centre. The Chemin de Fer de Ceinture (only later to become the Petite Ceinture) was born as a meeting of these ideals.
Background - Paris' Fortifications, France's Railway plans
Petite Ceinture (purple)
French Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers had his project for a ring of massive fortifications and forts around Paris voted into existence on the 1st of February 1841. Paris was only half its size then: its limits extended only to its 1784 Fermiers-Généraux tax wall (following almost exactly today’s metro lines 6 and 2), and the fortifications echoed its path in a ring roughly ten kilometres larger in diameter. A traveller leaving the city gates to visit the "intra-muros" land between the two walls, once past a strip of noisy tax-free-territory bars and cabarets just outside the city gates, would find himself in a quiet landscape marred by few constructions.
King Louis-Philippe's government drew plans in 1848 for a "star" railway network that made Paris the centre of a spider-web of rail that extended from the capital to all borders of France. That year was also a year of revolution, and the succeeding Second Republic government found that it could not finance its share of pre-revolution contracts with companies hired to build the network; many rail companies were also going bankrupt. Yet at the same time both the speed of rail transport and Paris' fortifications were pressing matters to France's generals, as the Prussian monarchy had regained power that year and was once more a danger to Republican France: it was essential to France's military that Paris' Fortifications wall and its outer fortresses in arms and ammunition.
The Companies
Paris in 1848 had five major stations run by five railway companies: Paris-Rouen (later Ouest, near today's gare Saint-Lazare, Nord (at today's gare du Nord), Paris-Strasbourg (later Est, at today's gare de l'Est), Paris-Lyon (at today's gare de Lyon) and Paris-Orléans (at today's gare d'Austerlitz). Each company guarded jealously their respective trade monopolies over railways that extended to different, but never intersecting, points in France; all were persuaded that a direct connection to a competing line would endanger their position of privilege. This made transport between competing railway destinations both long and onerous, as both freight and passengers would have to travel sometimes enormous distances to get between even neighbouring regions in a trip that would take them to a capital they would have to cross by road to get to the station taking them to their destination. This situation was especially onerous for the military, who counted on the speed of railway to get troops and supplies quickly between all points of France.
Even then the government had been courting the rail companies for their participation in a plan to build a circular railway to the inside of Paris' Fortifications, yet the best the short-lived 2nd Republic government could do was fruitlessly berate and coerce the companies who were more concerned with merger deals and private connections between themselves.
The Chemin de Fer de Ceinture Rive Droite
Napoleon III’s rose to power on the 2nd of December 1851. Pierre Magne, the new Ministre des Traveaux Publics (minister of public works), made the rail companies a much better offer in exchange for their participation in Paris' future circular railway, and had obtained the accord of the Rouen, Nord, Strasbourg, Orléans (by then bankrupt, but represented by the State) and Lyon companies by the 10th of December the same year.
The government offered to build everything for the proposed arc of railway but the stations, engines and rolling stock, proposed a 99-year lease (instead of the former government's 45-year offer), and this in exchange for a contribution of 1,000,000 francs from each company participating in the venture. The delay for the railway's completion was set at two years, a date at which the railway should be capable of providing both freight and passenger traffic. The companies were to manage the railway as one through a syndicate of their creation: the "Syndicat de Chemin de fer de Ceinture."
Because of an earlier deal (until then forbidden by the government as a point of coersion Ceinture negotiations), the inter-station connection began with a direct connection between the Nord and Strasbourg stations completed in April 1852; this arc of rail was private and would only later be connected to the Ceinture line. The first length of Ceinture rail, between Rouen's 'Bâtignoles' and Nord's 'La Chapelle' freightyards, was inaugurated on on the 12th of December 1852. A second section between Pont du Nord (La Chapelle) and Aubervilliers, a point where the Nord-Strasbourg private junction joined the Ceinture railway, was delivered on the 30th of September 1853. From then trains could circulate freely between the Batignolles, La Chapelle and (Strasbourg's) La Villette freight yards.
The contract for the line between Pont du Nord and La Chapelle was given to the Est in November 1853, and by the 25th March 1854 the line was completed from La Chapelle to Ivry. Extensive work beginning then on other parts of the line were a large viaduct of more than 700m long near Pont de Flandre, and to two tunnels of more than 1000m each had to be dug under the hills of Belleville and Charonne. In 1855, new freight yards were opened at Charonne and La Villette.
All the above rail was dedicated in its first years to freight transport only. It would take another eight years for the Ceinture Syndicate to provide a passenger service on its arc of rail; this was operational from the 14th of July 1862.
The Ouest Company's "Paris à Auteuil" Passenger Line
See La Ligne d'Auteuil.
In a stance (and direction) completely opposite that of the "freight-only" Ceinture Syndicate, the Pereire-owned ‘Ouest’ railway company began building a local passenger line from 1852. This line of rail left its Saint-Lazare station to follow the inside of Paris’ western fortifications to the Bourgeoise riverside village of Auteuil to the south. The Paris-Auteuil passenger line was inaugurated on the 5th of June 1854, and continued service until 1985.
The Chemin de Fer de Ceinture Rive Gauche
Construction ended on 27 February 1867. The last portion of track the linking line from Javel to Champs de Mars just in time for the 1867 Exposition Universelle. The petite Ceinture was looped on 25 March 1869 with the opening of the line between Courcelles and Clichy, the line was built under the St Lazare main line. On time for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, many level crossings were removed. The last extension of the petite Ceinture was the junction line from Champs de Mars to Passy for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. Little by Little, traffic would diminish, until the lines closed, on 1924 on the Champs de Mars branch and on 1934 for the PC (petite Ceinture). Only the Ligne d'Auteuil which was electrified in 1925 would remain open.
Abandonment
The Petite Ceinture is largely unused. The last portion to be in regular use was the Ligne d'Auteuil up until 1985. The interconnection between Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est was in use up until the 2000s but has now seen use fall dramatically. Passenger and freight rail services from both stations are hauled by engines from the SNCF depots at La Chapelle and Pantin and seldom exchange rolling stock. The Grande Ceinture is currently used to swap stock and as a diversion line.
Projects were afoot to use parts of the Petite Ceinture as a tramway, now called Line 3, but the Boulevard des Maréchaux, a ring of boulevards encircling Paris has been used instead for the line opened on 16 December 2006.
Recuperation
The VMI / RER C
The Ligne d'Auteuil closed in 1985 to make way for the newly opened RER C. The RER C has been extended to Montigny-Beauchamp and Argenteuil after the construction of a new tunnel crossing Paris North West. The line branches off at Champ de Mars, crosses the river Seine. From there the line is underground, indeed the Ligne d'Auteuil was covered in 1988 and the line between Henri Martin and Courcelles was reduced from 4 tracks down to 2. The line exits Paris in a tunnel that ends in Clichy.
References
- Template:Fr icon Carrière, Bruno. La Saga de la Petite Ceinture, La Vie du Rail, 1991-2001. ISBN 2-902808-01-1
- Template:Fr icon Histoire du réseau ferroviaire français, 1996, Editions de l'Ormet / Imprimerie Bayeusienne Graphique. ISBN 2-906575-22-4
External links
- Template:Fr icon Information about current events and construction related to the Petite Ceinture
- Template:Fr icon Acces information, maps, recent pictures (2007)
- Illustrated review of Georges Méliès' 1898 film 'Panorama from Top of a Moving Train' ('Panorama pris d’un train en marche'), believed to have been filmed along the route
