Laon rack railway

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Preserved railcar on the station forecourt

The Laon rack railway , officially Chemin de fer de Laon , existed from 1899 to 1971 in the French city ​​of Laon , located in the Aisne department of the Hauts-de-France region . From 1989 to 2016 the Poma 2000 funicular operated largely on the same route .

History and description

Terminal at the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville
Start of the steep section in Vaux
Railcars with closed control stands on the viaduct

The fortified old town of Laon is located on a table mountain , about 100 meters above the train station on the La Plaine – Hirson railway in the lower town. Steep stairs and winding streets with inclines of up to five percent lead from the lower to the upper town.

A project from 1888, following the example of the Langres rack railway, to set up a steam tram of the Decauville system with a gauge of 600 mm, was not implemented for several reasons. In 1897 the railway company Société anonyme du chemin de fer de Laon was founded with the aim of connecting the two parts of the city with an electric rack railway . On July 9, 1899, the meter-gauge railway was put into operation. It was laid out on a single track, with evasions at the stations. On the steep sections with gradients of nine to thirteen percent one was between the rails rack of construction Dept. attached that served on the downhill braking. The railway was a cog railway in the narrower sense, at most for a short time, as it was quickly established that the safe ascent could also be carried out in pure adhesion mode.

At the end of the line - in the lower town in the train station, in the upper town in front of the town hall on the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville - the trains ended on two parallel butt tracks. A later turning loop in front of the town hall existed until 1965 and was given up in favor of a double-track stump end point at the rear of the town hall. Shortly before the lower terminus, the depot was located south of the main line .

From the lower terminus on the site of the station, along the city side, along platform 1, the route ran in a wide curve to the south to the slightly elevated suburb of Vaux. Behind a house passage , an intermediate station was created at the Place du Mont de Vaux, uphill from the Vaux station of today's funicular. Then the steep ramp began with the rack. The winding Avenue Gambetta was first crossed on a masonry viaduct with six arches and almost 200 meters further under it in an approximately 50-meter-long tunnel. The railway reached the level of the Upper Town on a brick ramp that hugs the fortification wall. There the rack ended and after crossing the top of the wall, the track turned onto the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville on the outskirts. The track length was 1480 meters, at the same level a railway track was crossed in the lower area, the track of the small meter-gauge railway of the Compagnie des chemins de fer départementaux de l'Aisne and four streets , which ran from the suburb of La Neuville to Nouvion-le-Vineux between 1907 and 1932 .

From the beginning, there were four rack and pinion railcars for bidirectional operation, which were operated with 500 volts direct current. They had open control stands on both sides, were two-axle, twin-engine and 8.85 meters long. The original color scheme was dark green, more recently they were painted light blue with white ribbon windows. Sidecars did not exist.

There were no major incidents until 1914. During the First World War , the German troops withdrawing from Laon in 1918 destroyed the infrastructure including the tracks and the viaduct. The railcars were confiscated and taken to Germany and Poland. It was only eight years later that operations could be resumed.

In 1926 the terminal on the valley side was moved to the square in front of the train station. The pantographs of the railcars were replaced by Lyrabügel , the previously open cabs were closed. In 1944 the station district was destroyed by bombs and the stop there was rebuilt again. In 1968, railcar no. 1 was given a modern body after an accident.

For "safety reasons" and due to the old age of the vehicles, the operation of the railway was prohibited and stopped in January 1971. In the place of railcars there were omnibuses , which resulted in a decrease in the number of passengers. In 1989, a funicular was opened, largely along the old route.

Web links

Commons : Tramway de Laon  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Christoph Groneck: Metros in France . 1st edition. Robert Schwandl, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-936573-13-1 , p. 134 f .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clap de fin pour le Poma 2000 de Laon at remontees-mecaniques.net, accessed on September 14, 2017
  2. ↑ Walter Wefti: Dampfstrassenbahnen , p. 17 at Google Books, accessed on April 13, 2019
  3. ↑ StrassenbahnMagazin, issue 11/2014, p. 23
  4. ^ Laon Service par tramways du 9 June 1899 au 27 January 1971 at amtuir.org, accessed on February 29, 2016
  5. ↑ gares et trains at garesettrains.canalblog.com with historical photos of the train, accessed on March 2, 2016
  6. ↑ List des chemins de fer secondaires at trains-fr.org, accessed on March 2, 2015
  7. ↑ Laon - Tramways at amtuir.org, accessed on February 29, 2016