Batignolles-Châtillon

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Compagnie générale de Construction de locomotives (Batignolles-Châtillon)
legal form Corporation
founding 1917
resolution 1951
Reason for dissolution Takeover by SPIE
Seat Nantes , FranceFranceFrance 
Branch mechanical engineering

The Compagnie générale de Construction de locomotives (Batignolles-Châtillon) was a locomotive factory founded in 1917 in Nantes , which later also worked in other areas of mechanical engineering.

history

founding

Batignolles-Châtillon was founded on May 26, 1917 as a joint venture between the Parisian Société de construction des Batignolles and the Compagnie des forges de Châtillon-Commentry et Neuves-Maisons , with the partner companies contributing approximately half of the share capital. The first chairman of the company with the production plants in the Haluchère district of Nantes was Édouard-Ernest Goüin .

In 1917, Goüin bought the Saint-Georges farm from the city of Nantes to build the factory. The castle on the site with its outbuildings, including a chapel, was razed and the vegetable farmers working on the land were expropriated. The 200,000 m² factory site lay along the road to Paris, today's Boulevard Jules-Verne , and the Nantes – Châteaubriant railway line . During three years, the contractors François Mercier and Claude Limousin built factory buildings with a floor area of ​​16,500 m². They were in the prestressed concrete construction developed by Eugène Freyssinet , which was still new at the time . The site was opened up by 7 km of works railway tracks. The factory was inaugurated on October 16, 1920.

Workers' settlements

The three workers' settlements of La Halvêque, La Baratte and Le Ranzay were built for the more than 3,500 workers and their families . Many working-class families did not come from Nantes, but from the surrounding Brittany , Tours and Paris. But Austrians , Italians , Spaniards , Portuguese , Czechoslovaks and Poles also worked in the company. The workers' settlements had numbered streets and offered a variety of services, including an infirmary , a primary school , the Saint-Georges des Batignolles church , sports facilities and a motion picture theater . The settlements consisted of 450 wooden houses with their own garden. They were built by Établissements Bessonneau , which is why they are also called cités Bessonneau .

The workers' houses had three to four rooms. The outer shell consisted of a double board wall, which was painted red-brown on the outside. The walls and ceilings of the interior consisted of plastered battens. A shed was built on one of the front sides, which served as a storage room. The whole building stood on a concrete base. The roof was made of Angers slate .

Initially the houses had no running water. The settlements were supplied by public wells that were set up on the street corners and were connected to the Nantes water supply. Later the residents connected their houses to the water supply themselves, using material stolen more or less secretly by the employer.

In the beginning there were no toilets in the houses. Public toilet facilities with four cubicles were set up at strategic points in the settlement. The feces were collected in a pit with a capacity of 8 m³.

The workers' settlements have not been preserved. Le Ranzay was demolished in 1965, the cinema closed in 1968 and was demolished in 1998. La Halvêque gave way to social housing in 1972, while La Baratte, which was no longer inhabited from 1974, was replaced by the Stade de La Beaujoire .

development

Class 4200 steam locomotive for the Paris – Orléans Railway (PLM)
Electric locomotive 262 AE of the PLM
AMX-30 tank
Diesel locomotive built by Locomotives et Locotracteurs Diesel SA and operated by ABPF in Curitiba , Brazil .

In 1928, the Société de construction des Batignolles closes operations on Avenue de Clichy in Paris and transfers the customer base, patents and drawings for the construction of locomotives to the subsidiary Batignolles-Châtillon.

In 1934 the subsidiary Ernault-Batignolles for the construction of machine tools is founded and Sabeg for the construction of valve controls is taken over.

In 1942 Ernault-Batignolles was integrated into the parent company.

In 1950, Batignolles-Châtillon started manufacturing goods for the oil and gas industry . In addition, a prototype tank , the Batignolles-Châtillon 25T , is being built that did not go into series production. However, some details were used for the AMX-30 .

In 1951 SPIE gains control of Batignolles-Châtillon through a capital increase.

1954 Locomotives et Locotracteurs Diesel SA is taken over. Batignolles-Châtillon began building diesel locomotives for export to Morocco and Brazil in the post-war years .

In 1956 the company was separated into the two areas of Batignolles-Châtillon (mécanique générale) for the construction of locomotives and armaments and H. Ernault-Batignolles for the construction of machine tools. Batignolles-Châtillon (mécanique générale) also manufactures pumps and compressors for the oil and chemical industries, conveyor baskets for mining and rotary printing presses . Schneider participates in the company.

In 1957, the Batignolles-Châtillon holding company was taken over and released by the Société des Forges et Ateliers du Creusot (SFAC). Due to the decline in orders in its core business, Batignolles-Châtillon (mécanique générale) is also diversifying into the construction of mine locomotives and mining equipment. The transformation of the industrial sector led to serious social conflicts in 1957 and 1959 that affected the whole Loire-Atlantique department .

In 1960 the capital is increased and the company is listed on the stock exchange. Together with the Ruhrthaler Maschinenfabrik , the Batiruhr joint venture , headquartered in Paris, is set up to handle the field service activities for the mine locomotive business.

In 1963, Batignolles-Châtillon (mécanique générale) was completely taken over by SFAC. The name disappears.

Succession

In 1984 Creusot-Loire went bankrupt. The factory halls with a floor area of ​​80,000 m 2 are sold to the following three successor companies:

  • the British pump manufacturer Worthington-Simpson
  • the American Rockwell for the manufacture of rotary printing presses
  • the German GEA for the manufacture of dry coolers and heat exchangers for the oil and gas industry, which then founded the company Batignolles Technologies Thermiques (BTT). Today BTT is part of Kelvion .

literature

  • Jacky Réault: L'usine des Batignolles à Nantes . In: Norois . tape 112 , no. 1 , 1981, p. 661-673 , doi : 10.3406 / noroi.1981.4006 .
  • Joël Guibert: L'usine des Batignolles à Nantes . In: Visions contemporaines (Revue d'histoire Nantes) . No. 3 , 1989, pp. 71-91 .
  • Christophe Patillon, Joëlle Deniot: Batignolles: mémoires d'usine, mémoires des cités . Center de documentation du mouvement ouvrier et du travail, Nantes 1991.
  • Bruno Bellepomme: Les Batignolles, trois cités, un quartier . 1994.
  • Roger Peoc'h, Jean-Yves Le Guellaf: Notre vie de métallos batignollais de 1918 à nos jours . 2007.
  • Anne Burnel: La Société de construction des Batignolles de 1914-1939 . 1995, doi : 10.3406 / hes.1995.1775 .
  • Joëlle Deniot: Batignolles: mémoires d'usine, mémoires des cités . Center de documentation du Mouvement ouvrier et du travail, 1991.

Web links

Commons : Batignolles-Châtillon  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Région Pays de la Loire: Usine des Batignolles - Notice Patrimoine PDL. In: patrimoine.paysdelaloire.fr. Archived from the original on June 5, 2016 ; Retrieved June 5, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Louis Le Bail: Bessonneau: les petites maisons en bois des Batignolles. Archived from the original on October 15, 2014 ; Retrieved June 5, 2016 (French).
  3. ^ Archives municipales de Nantes - Histoire des quartiers. In: www.archives.nantes.fr. Retrieved June 5, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Batignolles, la mémoire sur les rails samedi. In: Ouest-France.fr. Retrieved June 5, 2016 (fr-fr).
  5. ^ "Historique" In: Comité d'entreprise de BTT. Retrieved November 22, 2011.
  6. ↑ Brochure ( Memento from June 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) from 2013