Compagnie du Chemin de fer Pau-Oloron-Mauléon et du Tramway de Bayonne à Biarritz

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The Compagnie du Chemin de fer Pau-Oloron-Mauléon et du Tramway de Bayonne à Biarritz (POM) operated the largest local railway network in the Basses-Pyrénées department .

In 1888, the company founded in 1883 under the name Chemins de fer à voie étroite du Midi, which since 1887 has called itself Compagnie des Tramways de Bayonne au Lycée et à Biarritz (BLB), opened a rail link between the ancient city on the Adour and the beach whose meter-gauge tracks were mostly laid along the streets, while the Compagnie du chemin de fer Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz (BAB), eleven years older , drove largely on its own rail track. From the BLB route branched off in Bayonne, where the inner-city traffic was also served, a short branch line of 1.4 kilometers in length to the Lycée de Marracq. At most every 15 minutes, a train ran the entire route within 31 minutes, while the branch line only ran every two hours in the early years.

In 1898/1901 the BLB passed to the Compagnie du Chemin de fer Pau-Oloron-Mauléon et du Tramway de Bayonne à Biarritz (POM). This introduced electrical operation on February 1, 1914. 14 railcars and 22 sidecars were available for this. The starting point of the train in Bayonne was initially the Place d`Armes. In 1924 a - later double-track - line was built from here over the Adour to the suburb of St. Ésprit, where it found its new terminus at the southern railway station.

The growing competition from buses and private cars led to more and more financial losses for the railway companies. Therefore, rail transport began to be gradually discontinued in the 1930s. However, this only affected the non-electrified routes opened shortly after the turn of the century with a total length of more than 200 kilometers in the rural areas of the department:

Pau Gare Midi – Monein 25 km
  • 1902 / + 1930
Pau Center-Pontacq 27 km
  • 1902 (Pv to Espoey as early as 1901) / + 1930
Pau Center - St. Laurent-Bretagne-Garlin (-Aire-sur-l`Adour) 48 km
  • 1902 b. Morlaas, 1904 b. Garlin, 1907 remainder / + 1931
St. Laurent-Bretagne-Lembeye 19 km
  • 1905 / + Pv 1929, Gv 1930
Oloron-Ste. Marie-Mauléon 43 km
  • 1904 / + 1931
Oloron-Ste. Marie-Sauveterre-de-Béarn 39 km
  • Pv 1901, Gv 1902 / + 1930
Connecting railway Pau Center – Pau Gare Midi 6 km (freight traffic only)
  • 1902/04 / + 1931

Finally, the steam train operation was completely shut down in 1930/31. In contrast, the electric railways of the former BLB network, which were renovated shortly before the First World War, were initially continued to be operated by the POM. The closure, which was also planned here, was all the more postponed when road traffic had been subjected to numerous restrictions since the beginning of the Second World War from 1939.

Towards the end of the war in 1944, the Régie Départementale des Transports en Commune Bayonne-Biarritz (TCBB) took over the networks of the BAB and the former BLB. But even the amalgamation in municipal hands could not stop the decline in local public transport, which brought with it the beginning normalization of economic conditions. The TCBB ceased operations on the former BLB network in 1948; only the tracks from the former BAB station to the BLB Beyris depot were used by trains on the former Bayonne – La Barre line until the end of 1952.

literature

  • Henri Domengie: Les petits trains de jadis - Volume 7: Sud-Ouest de la France. Editions du Cabri, Breil-sur-Roya 1986, ISBN 2-903310-48-3
  • Jean Robert: Histoire des transports dans les villes de France, Neuilly-sur-Seine 1974