I have never been on a steam train before.
Steam trains in the UK – where I was born – were retired from regular passenger service in 1968, a good five years before I was born and in France – where I live – the last passenger services ran in 1975, so my inner child was quite excited to learn that an association of die-hard steam fans maintain and run special steam services every year throughout the summer months. I failed to book last year so decided that this would make an acceptable inter-Interrail jaunt which happened to coincide with a birthday.
It was quite an early start to get to Limoges, the Coventry of France, as I first had to get to Thiviers to take the 08:04 TER to Limoges Bénédictins. This left on the dot shortly after the waiting room had emptied completely, a fact I observed from an empty waiting room mid-sentence of an interesting conversation with Companion about something apparently so engaging that my caffeine-deprived brain had not computed, until I looked at the departures board to confirm, that the train leaving in the direction of Limoges at 08:04 was in fact the 08:04 train to Limoges, and not a coincidental train that the SNCF had put in place just to spite me; never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The boulangerie opposite the station served a very nice pain aux raisins which was washed down by a coffee from the Relay in the station during the wait for the next train which, once the SNCF lady behind the counter had had a good laugh, left at 09:10 on the dot and got us to Limoges-Bénédictins with plenty of time. I reassured myself that I am a seasoned traveller.
Named after the monastery of the Order of Saint Benedict which stood near the station until the 1940s, the first station on the site was built from wood in 1856. In 1860, this was replaced by a stone building which remained in place until the 1920s when the city of Limoges and the Chémin de Fer Paris-Orléans agreed to build a new one, which opened in 1929. It is one of the last examples of monumental train stations to have been built in France and is a station so beautiful that Audrey Tatou once disturbed some pigeons in a desperate bid to have her neck sniffed by a complete stranger on her way to the buffet car, such are the romantic joys of rail travel in France.
Drizzle greeted us at Limoges, but that somehow added to the whole experience and was mitigated by the heat being given off by one of 70 chuffing beasts built for the French Ministry of Armed Forces by the Vulcan Foundry in the north of England in 1919. Initially bought by the government to transport heavy artillery around France’s rail network, our iron steed was sold to the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée in 1924 and later requisitioned to fulfil the needs of the occupying forces during World War Two. It was later discovered quietly parked in Bonn in 1950 from whence it was repatriated to France and happily chuffed away until being retired in 1975, but not before it hauled the SNCF’s final commercial steam service to Chalindrey in north-eastern France. The association that maintains it bought it from the SNCF in 1996 and transported to Limoges, where work started to restore it and bring it back into service.
Based in Limoges, the Conservatoire Ferroviaire Territoires Limousin Périgord runs these trains through the summer. Run by volunteers, it maintains two steam locomotives and is currently in the process of restoring another.
After a quick shorter-than-hoped squee at the awesomeness of the thing and my first ever lungful of redolent coal-infused vapours, Companion and I found ourselves ushered towards two window seats at the back of a first class carriage from the 1960s. Settled in our hugely-comfortable sproingy reclining seats that were showing their age but nonetheless noticeably more comfortable than today’s offerings, at 10:08 on the dot and with a series of ear-piercing squeals from her whistle, 140C38 unleashed all 1,400 of her horses and set off behind the last TER of the morning along the scenic route to Eymoutiers-Vassivière, chuffing joyously as she went. Occasionally we would be enveloped in a divine-smelling cloud of our own making. The weather – and occasionally some of the scenery – came through the window.
Although the weather was not in our favour, the views along the way remained spectacular. Sadly, a lot of these were marred by the mass of window-lickers who quickly gathered at other people’s windows to ooh and aah and block the view for those who had until this point been happily sitting down. As if it couldn’t turn quickly enough into my own kind of personal train hell, a woman with an accordion appeared and got them all so excited with her somewhat anachronistic rendition of the musette classic Agadou (French spelling) that those not tempted to immediately find a window through which to leap started clapping and singing along in a collective attempt to drown out the announcements of the lovely man telling us about our journey over the speakers. Just as I was scared it was going to turn into some kind of railway-themed new wave nightmare, we pulled into the Gare de Châteauneuf-Bujaleuf where a twenty-minute pause to let a TER coming in the opposite direction pass us on the single track gave children of all sizes an opportunity to jump like lemmings to relative quiet and have a look around. Some lucky children got to climb up into the cab and look at things. And toot the whistle.
Choo choo.
At 12:10 we pulled into Eymoutiers where we huddled on the platform as people with walkie-talkies and hi-vis gilets figured out how to get us out of the station safely in the absence of a footbridge. The solution was to split the train in half and pull some of it out of the way allowing us to cross the tracks on the little crossing provided before going about out business using the few hours we had to find food and to do some power-tourism.
Set in the east of the Haute-Vienne, Eymoutiers is a medieval town which was historically important in the tanning industry and had its heyday during the 17th century, due to an abundance of cattle and pure water from the Vienne. A mixture of tall stone and wattle and daub houses lines the narrow streets in the centre, and it looks a lovely place that definitely requires a longer visit when the weather is slightly less dreary. After a traditional French feast of fish and chips and a beer, we started our visit with a look round the artisanal market in the arches under the library then wandered to the church and pottered around the streets dodging in and out of the rain. Every now and then our locomotive let out an excited peep which resonated around the town, and after a few hours it was time to head back to the station and take our seats for the journey home.
We decided to try a third class coach – non fumeur – as we could pretty much guarantee window seats. These coaches were built in the 1930s for the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord and were functionally rustic, but nonetheless perfectly comfortable. The horrors of the musette were not to be repeated, and just as we started to pull out of the station at 16:00 for the return journey, the sun came out and the windows were opened and everything became joyous.
As the grey skies had started to give way to glorious blue and sunshine the return trip was better than the morning trip, and although there was some limited accordion accompaniment, our views of the passing world were not blocked by other people as our facing two-by-two bench seats had their own door and its own window. Occasionally, when nobody was looking of couse, I tentatively stuck my head through the window despite the warnings on the door not to do so to get another lungful of lovely or a faceful of steam. And there were views, too.
We sat back and enjoyed the ride through woodland, ever eager to come through the window, over ten bridges crossing the River Vienne, across seven viaducts of varying majesty, and through nine tunnels – the smells of which came in through the window and were completely new to me. In one, someone had the fun idea of turning off the lights to give us the ‘authentic experience’ of train travel of the time; it turns out that tunnels can be very dark indeed. Some of the volunteers wandered through to see us and the jovial chef de bord was happy to entertain the children (of all sizes) by letting them wear his hat.
Too soon for my liking we arrived back in Limoges, slightly earlier than scheduled, and set off to find the 17:33 TER back to Thiviers which left with a 45-minute delay due to trees on the line caused by storm Patricia. We made it to Nexon, where we were not supposed to stop, just as another announcement informed us that more trees had fallen across the line and that it would be at least another hour before they could get the men with chainsaws back again to sort it out. The SNCF were really good and brought bottled water and bowls for people travelling with animals and/or feral children, and let us off the train to stretch our legs or organise alternative travel as necessary. Staff walked the length of the train checking for people with onward connections and figuring out ways of getting them to their final destinations. It was all very well-organised.
We eventually pulled into Thiviers about two hours late, and started a quiet trundle home.
