Amongst well known Paris landmarks is the Gare de Lyon, one of the long-distance train station. Its huge clock tower can be seen from far away. Destinations served are mostly South-East via Lyon and Switzerland via Dijon. In the 1950's , train journeys from Paris to the Riviera would take about 12 hours. The glorious steam era was fading away but in some area of France, steam engines were still being used!
CLOCK TOWER
There is always a kind of silver chord connecting to the past !
Anytime I catch a high-speed train at Gare de Lyon to return home in the south of France, I can feel memories of a long gone past resurfacing and taking me back to the 50’s.
I can hear the sounds, I can smell the smoke, I can still see the faces of this couple travelling to Nice, smoking a cigarette in the corridor of a first-class train coach, looking at each other in a loving fashion. Nowadays, train travel far too fast. No time for a romance.
(Paris, Gare de Lyon, the clock-tower)
A quick five hours from Paris to Nice, far, far away from the “Blue Train” of the past leaving Paris at 9:00Pm and arriving in Nice, under the Mediterranean sun the next day at 7:30 AM.
Gone is the smoke, gone are the sounds of a 241P steam engine waiting for the on-time departure with the driver and the fireman exchanging information on the platform, by the engine’s ladder.
Also gone is the aroma escaping through the window of the CIWL dining car when kitchen personnel were preparing lunch for 96 happy travellers who would enjoy a Côte de Boeuf with baked potatoes while looking at the fields of Burgundy going by. The trains I remember of, were trains for the rich, the prominent, the movie stars.
(En route to the Riviera with the "Mistral")
Not far away from Gare de Lyon , other passengers were also catching their train from Gare de la Bastille but the end of their trip was limited to the end of the line, 20 miles away from the heart of Paris and the place de la Bastille. Suburbanites had their own rituals on their commuter’s train and their future was restricted to an evening return trip home or a morning departure to work, in a crowded train running from Boissy-Saint-Léger through Joinville-le-Pont, on the way to the bumper of Gare de la Bastille.
In summer, Parisians living along the Bastille railway line would keep their windows shut to protect furniture and household linen from the soot that otherwise would sneak in and smear people and objects alike. Along the boulevard Diderot, about five meters above the cobblestones, 141 TB type steam engines would chug up and down the two tracks, hauling thousands of Parisians lost in their thoughts.
(Bastille's train station in Paris prior 1969..steam days...)
Our departures from Gare de Lyon were probably more pleasant than a simple return ticket to suburbia. Côte d’Azur, Switzerland for the sky season in Saas-Fee, Pontresina, Wengen or Lenk in the Simme Valley near Interlaken, all of these wonderful journeys would start from the same train station in Paris. It always started in the same fashion, arriving on the platform and stopping by a sleeping-car or a first-class coach, reading the metal plate hanging on the side. The most important for me were the last few minutes before departure, watching the hand of the clock slowly ticking till it was time for the train to leave exactly as planned.
Every now and then, my father would simply say:” let’s go and visit my aunts” so we knew that a trip to Besançon would soon take place and even if visiting the “aunts” was a boring experience, it was compensated by the pleasure of the train ride and eating lunch in the dining car.
Auntie Rose and Auntie Helena had been lucky and possibly guided by divine inspiration! They had left Krakow in Poland a few years before world war two and the family was now running a fur business on Avenue de la République. Both of the aunts had been in hiding during Nazi occupation and had joined several other Jews in convents spread over the Franche-Comté area, not far away from the Swiss border!
(Eating in the train: a pleasurable affair, even if it did cost " an arm and a leg")
( Time to say "goodbye"...)
A taxi cab would take us from home. Landmarks were always the same: driving by Prison de la Santé, going down boulevard Port-Royal, turning left on boulevard de l’Hôpital , driving by Gare Austerlitz and pretty soon crossing of the Seine, from the left bank where we lived to the right side of Paris. On the horizon, we could be the clock tower of Gare de Lyon. Few minutes after was the real beginning of the journey as we would alight from the taxi cab. My father, holding to the train tickets, would hail a couple of bag-men who would then pick up the luggage and carry it for us all the way to the platform where our train was waiting to depart.
I remember my heart pounding as we walked through the station hall. Waiting for their train were business men wearing horn-rimmed glasses, American military personnel, French sailors on their way to Toulon naval base. I even remember the newspapers at the news stand: “Combat”, “Paris-Presse”,” l’Humanité”. I can still smell the aroma of Hot Dogs coming from the food stand.
Going from Paris to Besançon was a five and half hour train ride. A 2D2 type electrical locomotive would pull the train all the way to Dijon and there the engine needed to be replaced by a 241P type steam locomotive which would haul the train onward to Besançon, Pontarlier and the Swiss border for and arrival in Lausanne. The change of locomotive always attracted many of the train passengers and of course we would take the opportunity to stretch our legs.
I can still smell hot oil and grease, feel the heat of the engine boiler, see the darkened faces of the locomotive crew wearing the regulation protective glasses. Every now and then, a “chief driver” would join the crew for a check-ride. Wearing a specific type of coverall blouse, the man himself a former driver who had risen through the ranks would ride on the footplate all the way to Lausanne, sleep there with the locomotive crew and would do the same kind of check ride the next day on the way back to Dijon.
( a "P" type sleeping-car)
The Gare de Lyon was often the departure point for mysterious trips to Switzerland where my father would go and rest by himself, or at least did we think so. My mother and I would go with him all the way to the sleeping-car, kiss him goodbye and return home, my mother just saying “don’t be sad, he will shortly be back”. The best trips for all of us, kids, were when summer time had come and we were southbound to the Riviera! We were just the kings! Elation was incredible.
Bag-men would come all the way to the train, bring the luggage inside the compartment and it was already time for departure. Gaining speed through the Paris suburbs, it was soon time for lunch in the CIWL dining-car. Tables we set with fine crockery bearing the insignia of the “Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-lits et des Grands Express Européen”, the European equivalent of the American Pullman car company.
Waiters dressed in white and black would see you through a three courses meal, trying to keep serving without dropping sauce or baked potatoes on the passengers. A table would fit four people so one of us would have to share a table in exile somewhere in the dining-car. The CIWL rolling stock was old and had probably seen better days. In winter, to compensate for a deficient heating system, large dark blue blankets were hooked half-way up on the windows. It gave a cosy atmosphere to the event.
The menu was always about the same: appetizer, entrée , a generous cheese plate, and for dessert ice-cream or fruit. On the walls of the dining car were posters for Vichy water or Dijon mustard and we found this very exciting.
(Engineer and fireman, the masters of their steam engine)
In a five-square meter kitchen a team of two would prepare meals for many passengers looking for a pleasant moment while the train crossed France at the incredible speed of 80,77 (!) Mph. Shortly before midnight, the “Mistral” (1) would pull into Antibes train station and passengers on their way to Juan-les-Pins would alight and meet those waiting for them. There was this incredible smell of fresh figs in the air mixed with the smell of the train’s smoke as the convoy was slowly departing for the last few miles left before reaching Nice.
The next morning, we would wake up in the anticipation of a day at the beach but since I already was a rebellious child, I would often sneak out of the family hotel on avenue de Provence a few hundred meters away from the Paris to Nice railway track just to wait on the bridge overlooking the shining rails until a steam engine hauling a freight train or a passenger express would wrap me up in its dark and grey smoke.
Then I knew that holidays had really started....
©2017 Sylvain Ubersfeld pour Paris-Mémoires
(1) The “Mistral” was a first class only luxury train from Paris to Nice. It was one of the last trains including a Pullman car and a “blue and gold” dining car operated by the CIWL (2) (2) CIWL (Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-lits) was an international company created in 1876 by Georges Nagelmakers, a Belgian citizen. In partnership with several national or private railways on the old continent, the company operated luxury sleeping cars, dining cars and Pullman salons. With the important changes in the transport world and the introduction of high speed trains, the CIWL is now concentrating its activity on tourism in general and has added the letter T to its former name (thus becoming Compagnie International des Wagons-lits et du Tourisme) The CIWL tradename and all associated designs are still protected by copyrights laws.