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| Coal train in 1962 |
The metre gauge, 30 km line between St.-Georges-de-Commiers and La Mure (in the Département of Isère) began life as a colliery line and was opened in 1888. The railway was electrified in 1903 using a symmetrical current power supply with two overhead lines at plus and minus 1200 volts DC respectively. In 1950 this non-standard system was replaced with a conventional single overhead line at 2400 volts DC.
Coal traffic ceased in 1988 but the line was converted into a tourist attraction with red locomotive livery replacing the previous green. All of the line's historic installations were kept: the workshops, forge, joinery workshop. The connection with the PLM railway's Grenoble-Veynes line, since 1938 the SNCF line is at Saint-Georges-de-Commiers. The necessary facilities together with the transhipment platform for the automatic transfer of the coal from the coal cars to the trains operated by PLM were built adjacent to the PLM station. Today the trains of the Chemin de fer de La Mure run at a leisurely pace of up to 30 km/h through very scenic terrain.
Last 26 October a landslide destroyed one of the viaducts and a tunnel portal which may delay the 2011 season. Website
Update
The CdF de la Mure website now says that the railway will not function at all in 2011.
I live not far away from this railway.
ReplyDeleteSadly, it seems the railway is no forrader in 2017.
The damage is so great and the possibility of a recurrence such that an expert has advised that the only way around the problem - literally - is to tunnel into the cliffs on either side of the landside and loop around it inside. The expense would presumably take decades to recover.
Other possibilities considered have been a service from the La Mure end down to near the landslide by conventional train and having drisane/velorail vehicles riddnd individually downhill toward the site and then hauled back up.
Six years and none taken up, although a recent announcement is that the local council hopes 'something' will allow operation of some kind from next year!