The blurbBefore the First World War, Paris expanded and invaded the Île-de-France region. Suburban houses stretched as far as the eye could see along the railways, and the southeastern suburbs, served by the Paris, Lyon and Méditerranée (PLM) network, now reached Brunoy, Combs-la-Ville, Melun, Fontainebleau, and many other towns that were gradually losing their rural calm of the "provincial" towns they no longer were.
The PLM, like other networks, did not like suburban traffic, which caused high wear-and-tear for the equipment and did not bring in any money. Before 1914, ancient side-door cars ended their careers there, and the network ignored the complaints of office managers and assistant directors who traveled between Parisian ministries and their pretty millstone villas near the Sénart forest or Fontainebleau.
The PLM was wrong, and during the 1920s, it was clear that the suburbs had become a major traffic hub and, faced with public outcry, railway companies were finally investing large sums in specific, high-performance equipment. The 242 AT locomotive was part of the program, intended to replace less powerful tank locomotives which, until then, had performed poorly, failing to meet the demands of commuters who were always in a hurry.
In the 1950s, some rather astonishing things were still being done in this rather chic suburb, whose clientele left their beautiful homes in Brunoy or Bois le Roi to come and scrape paper in Parisian ministries or investment banks and fully intended that the daily journey be smooth, comfortable, punctual and clean – all qualities that the steam locomotive would have to (badly) assume for some time to come.
The fleet of cars inherited from the old Paris, Lyon and Méditerranée network by the SNCF in 1939 is the largest and also the largest in terms of two- or three-axle cars. With a total of 7,182 cars, including 5,098 with two or three axles, some of which were built in the 1880s, it is a veritable tide of harsh and noisy vehicles that still awaits the commuters of 1938, and will always await those of the 1950s and 1960s… These old cars are practically all three-axles, which is a very striking technical characteristic for this network. This arrangement ensures better ride comfort, because it prevents an axle from “falling” when passing over the rail joint, since there are always two other axles under the car to ensure the chassis is held in place. In fact, the rare cars with these axles are old three-axle cars from which the central axle has been removed, often for reasons of curve registration on small rural lines traveled at low speed.
But things can no longer continue like this, because, in the 20th century, the growing expansion of suburban traffic requires a review of the game's data, especially since some brilliant Universal Exhibitions, notably that of 1900 in Paris, demonstrated to the general public the know-how of the railway companies in terms of progress, comfort and speed. The suburbanite forges a soul of grumbler whose tradition, moreover, continues to this day.
