Train Touristique du Cotentin
Le Train Touristique du Cotentin (TTC), also Train de la Côte des Isles ( French for island coast train ), is a tourist train on the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy in France .
It is a line operated with railcars and train sets from the 1930s that connects two of the western coastal towns of the Cotentin , Barneville-Carteret and Portbail , in the Manche department . It leads over the stops Saint-Jean de la Rivière and Saint-Georges de la Rivière through bocages , dunes and fields always along the coast opposite the Channel Islands Jersey , Guernsey , Sark and Alderney . The single-track line is nine kilometers long and not electrified. The trains only run in summer. During the week the timetable is coordinated with the market days in Portbail and Carteret.
history
The Train Touristique du Cotentin runs on part of the historic Carentan- Carteret rail link . This standard-gauge railway made it possible to cross the Cotentin peninsula from east to west and connected the railway lines from Cherbourg to Caen (or Paris , Gare Saint-Lazare ) in the east and from Cherbourg via Sottevast to Coutances in the west of the peninsula.
The Carteret-Portbail line is operated by the Association Tourisme et Chemins de fer de la Manche (ATCM), which was founded in 1982 as the Association pour la Sauvegarde du Chemin de fer Carentan-Carteret (Association for the Maintenance of the Carentan-Carteret Railway).
Of 21 December 1988 to 30 June 1994 this union the could of volunteers and railway enthusiasts, with the support of local authorities Train Touristique du Cotentin on a 10 km stretch between Carentan and Baupte with railbuses the SNCF from the 1950s such as the X 3825 and operate the X 2426 . After the final closure of this eastern section of the TTC , the X 2426 was sold to PontAuRail, a similar company in Haute-Normandie , which also ceased operations on its route in 2007. The X 3825 came to the Quercyrail in the Massif Central , which has also not been able to operate since 2004.
On June 23, 1990, the western section between Barneville-Carteret and Portbail was opened as a tourist train. Because of the journey along the picturesque canal coast, this route has been preserved for tourism to this day. The ACTM has a type BB 63069 locomotive with the original paint (green with yellow stripes) and three Bruhat 1930 S passenger cars on this route .
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 21 '43.6 " N , 1 ° 43' 57.9" W.