Chemin de fer de l'Est
.jpg)
The Compagnie des Chemins de fer de l'Est ( EST ; German " Society of the Eastern Railways " ) was from 1853 to 1938 a French railway company organized under private law .
history
prehistory
The company was founded in 1845 as Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Strasbourg and received the concession for the Paris – Strasbourg line with branches from Épernay to Reims and from Frouard to Metz and on to the then Prussian border with a connection to the Forbacher Bahn . The line was opened in sections from 1849–1854. Your train station in Paris was the Gare de l'Est , which was initially called Embarcardère de Strasbourg . The company grew rapidly through takeovers and other concessions. In 1853 the company received the concession for the Paris – Mulhouse railway line . In the same year it merged with the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Montereau à Troyes and renamed itself Compagnie des chemins de fer de l'Est .
expansion
In 1854 the Ostbahn took over the Compagnie de Strasbourg à Bâle , in 1857 the operation of the railways in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , in 1858 the Mülhausen-Thann railway and in 1863 the network of the Ardennes Railway . At the beginning of 1870, the Eastern Railway in France operated a network of 2,838 km in length, plus the lines operated in Luxembourg.
The company was involved in a " Belgian railway crisis" in 1868/1869 . With financial help from the French government, she tried to buy railways in eastern Belgium. Angry Britain. In the end, the Belgian government worked successfully to ensure that it was not bought.
Consequences of the war 1871
As a result of the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent peace treaty of Frankfurt , France had to cede Alsace and Lorraine to the German Empire . France expropriated the EST lines that were now on German territory (841 km) and in Luxembourg (237 km) . From this, the empire founded the Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine . The shareholders were compensated by the French state with 325 million francs , the sum offset against the reparations to be paid .
The network of the French Eastern Railway expanded to a length of 5027 kilometers by the end of 1912 as a result of further railway constructions and takeovers, something that did not change significantly in the following period. The duration of all EST concessions was set in 1883 until November 26, 1954.
As a result of the First World War , Alsace-Lorraine fell back to France in 1919. The routes were now operated independently by France as a state railway under the name Réseau ferroviaire d'Alsace-Lorraine (AL).
nationalization
On January 1, 1938, the major French railway companies were merged into the newly founded state railway SNCF . The EST and the AL formed Region 1 of the SNCF.
literature
- Lambert: Monograph du Réseau de l'Est . Paris 1912.
- Victor von Röll: Encyclopedia of the Railway System . Volume 5. Keyword: French Eastern Railway . Berlin, Vienna 1914, pp. 191–193.
- Stefan Vockrodt: The Compagnie des chemins de fer de l'Est (EST) . In: Railways in Paris = Railway History Special 2 (2015). ISBN 978-3-937189-94-9 , p. 2.