Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord

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NORD poster from 1899 - apart from Germany and Russia, even Japan and China are advertised as travel destinations

The Compagnie des Chemins de fer du Nord ( NORD ) was a French railway company organized under private law .

Geographical location

NORD 1853 route network

The NORD connected Paris and north-western France with Belgium and the coast on the English Channel . Their terminus in Paris was the Gare du Nord , which was initially called the "Belgian station".

history

founding

The law of June 11, 1842 established the construction of a number of railway lines from Paris to the border with Belgium via Lille and Valenciennes and branch lines from Lille to Calais and Dunkirk . The NORD was brought into being on the basis of another law of July 15, 1845. On September 20, 1845, it received the concession for the construction and operation of these lines (a total of 496 km) for a period of 38 years , as it not only waived any financial contribution from the state, but even reimbursed it for financial advance payments. The company was owned by the Rothschild Frères (Paris) and NM Rothschild & Sons ( London ) banks . James de Rothschild became the Society's first president, and remained so until his death in 1868.

expansion

NORD 1914 route network
A train passing the La Chapelle depot in Paris , before 1914
Entrance of the Flèche d'Or into the Paris terminus Gare du Nord , 1927

The first NORD railway line ran in 1846 from the Belgian train station in Paris via Douai and Lille to Calais and Dunkirk. Further routes were laid in 1847 to Amiens , Valenciennes and the Belgian cities of Kortrijk and Gent . The line from Creil to St. Quentin , which was licensed to another company in 1845, was taken over by NORD in 1847 and the 123 km long Amiens- Boulogne-sur-Mer line in 1852 . With these trunk lines, an extensive network was created between Paris, Rouen , the Atlantic coast in Normandy and Belgium. In connection with other concessions granted by the French state to NORD in 1852, the duration of the concession for all of its routes was set at 99 years from 1848.

In the following years the network was continuously expanded. Well and solidly financed by the two banks as shareholders , the operating length grew from 3606 km at the end of 1890 to 3840 km at the end of 1912. In addition, there was a further 170 km in Belgium, where the railway operated under the name “NORD Belge”.

The Belgian entrepreneur Simon Philippart tried in the 1870s to compete with NORD by merging a number of railways (the Compagnie des Chemins de fer du Nord-Est , the Lille-Valenciennes railway company and the Lille-Béthune railway company ). However, he quickly succumbed to their economic superiority. On December 17, 1875, NORD signed lease agreements with the Nord-Est railway company, on December 31, 1875 with the Lille-Valenciennes company and on February 2, 1876 with the Lille-Béthune company, for the duration of their concessions, thus effectively taking over these railways .

The extreme shortage of coal during the First World War - the most important coalfields were occupied by German troops - led in 1917 to the first considerations regarding the electrification of lines. The government sent a delegation of experts to the United States , where they toured corresponding facilities on the Norfolk and Western Railway and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad . After their return, on November 14, 1918, a committee was set up to determine the type of electrification of the various French networks. While the electrification of lines in the southern half of France and in the greater Paris area was advocated, the lines in northern and eastern France were rejected for strategic military reasons. Therefore, the trains of the NORD were pulled by steam locomotives until they were merged with the Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF) and far beyond.

Since the traffic between the European metropolises Paris on the one hand and London, Brussels , Antwerp and Amsterdam on the other ran via the NORD , a number of well-known luxury trains ran on its routes . These included:

The End

Advertising poster from the transition period to the state railway in 1938 that both the NORTH and for the SNCF advertises

Like the other large private railways in France, NORD was nationalized in 1938 and integrated into the SNCF as Region 2.

vehicles

"Baltic" NORD 3.1102 in the Mulhouse Railway Museum (Cité du train)
NORD 3.1192 optimized by André Chapelon in the Cité du train

NORD was a leader in locomotive development: Alfred de Glehn developed the first four-cylinder compound engines for steam locomotives here . The company mainly built its locomotives in its own workshops. In 1911, with the 3.1101 and 3.1102, the world's first "Baltic" tender locomotives with a 2'C2 ' wheel arrangement were built in the Ateliers de La Chapelle .

The NORD locomotives were initially painted green with red stripes, the later compound locomotives were painted chocolate brown with yellow stripes. Mixed traffic machines and shunting locomotives were black. After the First World War, NORD procured “Pacifics” built by Blanc-Misseron for high-quality travel :

  • 1920–1923 the NORD 3.1201–3.1240
  • 1929 NORTH 3.1241-3.1250

From 1930, NORD acquired 40 compound machines ("Super Pacifics") built by SFCM, which were given the company numbers 3.1251-3.1290.

  • NORTH 3.1237 (around 1926)

  • “Super Pacific” from NORD as 231 C 61 from SNCF in Caudry

At the end of the 1920s, engineer André Chapelon began optimizing steam locomotives for the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans (PO). The outstanding performance of the 3356 prototype prompted NORD to acquire 22 Pacifics that had been converted in this way and to include them in its fleet as NORD 3.1171–3.1192. These machines were so convincing that NORD had other locomotives of the same type built from scratch instead of the "Super Pacifics" purchased from 1930:

  • 3.1193–3.1198 at Blanc-Misseron,
  • 3.1111–3.1120 at CAFL and
  • 3.1121–3.1130 at Fives-Lille .

The locomotives were excellent high-speed runners and pulled famous trains such as the Flèche d'Or. The NORD 3.1174 set the speed record for all French steam locomotives in 1935. With a towing capacity of 400 t, she was 174 km / h fast.

  • Locomotive No. 22 in the La Chapelle depot

  • NORD 2.801, built in 1873 by the Société anonyme la Métallurgique in Tubize , around 1900

  • NORD 4.193 in the Gare du Nord in Paris

  • 2'C2 'tank locomotive NORD 3,804 from 1909

Before the Second World War , Belgian locomotives were regularly on the tracks of the NORD, the SNCB tender locomotives of the 10 series reached e.g. B. Maubeuge daily . From 1935, the 10 series was replaced by the 1 series , which, due to its high axle load of 24 t, was only allowed to operate in France with a special permit. Their maximum speed was set at 100 km / h , these locomotives could no longer go beyond Aulnoye and Lille .

literature

Web links

Commons : Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Röll, p. 190.
  2. ^ Röll, p. 190.
  3. ↑ Vockrodt.
  4. ^ Röll, p. 190.
  5. ↑ Didier Janssoone: L'Histoire des chemins de fer pour les nuls , p. 64 ff.
  6. ↑ Vockrodt.
  7. ↑ Vockrodt.
  8. ↑ Thomas Estler: Locomotives of the French state railway SNCF . 1st edition. Transpress, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-613-71480-9 , pp. 21 .
  9. ↑ Des Pacific belges trop lourdes pour les rails du Nord in: Ferrovissime No. 90, p. 14