Blurb:
In the early 1960s, the image of the railway was deteriorating: the highways built at the gates of Paris extended across the entire territory, and the Caravelles, launched by Air Inter, brought even the most distant cities closer together. A minister, Edgard Pisani, became aware of this problem. He knew that trains could also send odometers into overdrive.
Since the 1930s, Germans and Americans had established themselves in this field. Commissioned on November 15, 1960, the Capitole has had three different periods. First as a 1st class express train with supplement, numbered 1009/1010 and composed of A9 DEV stainless steel cars, type 1956, equipped with high-power brakes, necessarily hauled by a BB 9200 locomotive equipped with rheostatic braking.
But it was 28 May 1967 that was the big day. The Capitole, through the Sologne forests, between Fleury-les-Aubrais and Vierzon, was the first express train to run at 200 km/h. Gone were the carriage green and stainless steel gray. The Capitole inaugurated its new clothes, making way for the "Grande Vitesse" cars clad in red, designed by Paul Arzens.
Its locomotives, the swift BB 9200s, also arrived in bright red livery, with a dolphin-gray band at the waistband, and displayed their service status prominently on an enamel plaque: "CAPITOLE." It is said that the choice of exterior paintwork had an influence on the clientele.
When the same train was made up of red and green cars, it was not uncommon to see passengers scamper from a green one to a red one... Since 1955, the French have also entered the race for high-speed rail. On 29 March, on the Landes line, a BB 9004 locomotive reached 331 km/h. But the track and the overhead lines did not emerge unscathed from this ordeal. However, tests and studies conducted between Paris and Vierzon show that it is possible to operate a high-speed train on the Paris-Toulouse line. This was the era when the SNCF asserted that speed was not a luxury but a necessity.
The Capitole was about to take off. It would be the first to provide a regular 200 km/h rail service in France. From its first days of operation, this train was a success. In Limoges, the train's arrival was an event. Departures and arrivals each time moved curious onlookers who, armed with a camera or even an easel, attempted to immortalize the elegant red convoy. In fact, the engine's colors blended perfectly with the green of the Limoges-Bénédictins bell tower. And the dining car was popular with gourmets, who were served as in a luxury Parisian brasserie, by stylish waiters.
Its success was such that new cars were added every Friday. Regular passengers are trying to forget the terrible shock caused a few months earlier by the terrorist Carlos, who, on 29 March 1982, planted a bomb on the train, which exploded between Ambazac and La Jonchère (5 dead and 29 injured). In the mid-1980s, the TGV took its first turns, and the gradual arrival of the TGV Atlantique type sounded the death knell for this exceptional train, which made its last trips in September 1991. The Capitole star faded before going out, but no matter, it had already joined the select circle of legendary trains.
