Compagnie du chemin de fer Bayonne – Anglet – Biarritz

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Bayonne – Anglet – Biarritz Railway steam locomotive and double-decker coaches

The Compagnie du chemin de fer Bayonne – Anglet – Biarritz (BAB) established the first rail connection to the fashionable seaside resort of Biarritz , which in the 1870s still had no local rail connection. The nearest station was about three kilometers as the crow flies south of the center of the seaside resort in La Négresse on the main line opened in 1864 by the Compagnie des Chemins de fer du Midi (Southern Railway Company) from Bordeaux via Bayonne and Hendaye to the Spanish Irun . It was not until February 28, 1911, that a branch line of the southern railway to the city station Biarritz-Ville opened from La Négresse, today's Biarritz station , and was used regularly until 1980.

So it made sense, in the interest of the heavy tourist traffic, to connect the city directly to the neighboring city of Bayonne by a branch line. In 1877, the Compagnie du chemin de fer Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz (BAB) opened a standard-gauge local railway whose steam trains required a travel time of 15 minutes for the eight-kilometer route. Depending on the time of day, the timetable included one or two trains every hour. The two-cylinder compound locomotives (Compound) designed by Anatole Mallet , the first of their kind in France, received a great deal of attention from experts. However, technical laypeople also noticed them because of their chimneys, which were made particularly long to protect passengers on the upper deck of the passenger cars.

The imposing terminus in Bayonne was on the Allées Paulmy , the station for Anglet in the northern part of the Cinque Cantons ; in Biarritz in 1890 the route was extended by 400 meters into the center.

After the First World War, the line was electrified with a direct current of 650 volts; at the same time the gauge was changed from standard gauge to meter gauge. Originally the aim was to establish a track connection with the southern line, but now plans to merge with the neighboring railways, the Compagnie des Tramways de Bayonne au Lycée et à Biarritz (BLB) and the Société des Voies Ferrées Départementales du Midi (VFDM).

Part of this project was realized in 1944 when the two networks of the BAB and the (former) BLB were united under the umbrella of the Régie Départementale des Transports en Commune Bayonne-Biarritz (TCBB). However, the time-related decline in traffic could not be prevented by this summary and the cycle timetable offered. This even applied to the connection between Bayonne and Biarritz, where half-hourly traffic on its own rail track was offered without disruption.

The TCBB ceased operations on the former BAB network at the end of 1952; until the end she had used the SU Beyris depot and the tracks that led there from the BAB station in Bayonne.

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