Railway of the Month

Sainte Colline-des­Champs Dennis Allenden has created a little bit of France in the USA- all to 1 : 43 scale! Photographs by the author

IN Michelin 64, a land of light wine and silver streams where the complaining willows lean low, there runs in this year of 1909 a little train, intensely local, highly vernacular. It starts out from the village of Clocbemerle-en-Touraine just after (on market days, just before) dawn and meanders sootily towards the town of Sainte-Colline-des-Champs. The consist, colourful and unvarying, is a locomotive and four items of rolling stock. Motive power is a green 2-4-0T built, they say, around 1868 by the Batignolles company in Paris. The design, however, is at least a decade older than thac. Over 200 of the little slabsided flared funnel "bicyc­lettes" were built for the hysterical commuter traffic out of the Saint-Lazare terminal, and for forty years they hauled open­topped double-deck four-wheelers to VersaHlcs and Saint Ger­main-en-Laye. Their tiny wheelbases enabled them literally to be manhandled round their trains on the little turning plates in the stations, and out on the road they scurried along like frightened rabbits. No. 103 has not yet lost her Ouest livery-but later this year the Etat management will outshop her in a drabber green with a new number. Now relaxing in her Loire-valley rustication, she hauls the local all stations "marchandises-voyageurs" shuttle service. The "marchandises" bit is taken care of by a head end Etat brake and luggage van in grey, dated and four wheeled; for passengers follows an 1860 Ouest third in faded green; unlit, un­plush, unconvenienced, sans everything except a skyriding brake cabin offering far more in the way of comfort than the prison­bleak revenue space. Next (and a little better) an open-platform second that is the property of the S.M.I. (Societe Mecanique de l'Indre) and is used for transporting happy workers to and from their interminable sentenoes in the Ste. Colline works. S.M.I as yet haven't painted out the insigne of the former owner, the great Sud de la France system-they may never get round to it. Finally, a saloon. Specifically an old Ouest funeral saloon, now providing limited plush stuffiness for the travelling gentry. I ts crimson intramural opulence, laced and buttoned and antimacas­sared, boasts faded sepia prints of the select haunts it once custo­mised-Dcauville, La Baule, Granville. Outside, the varnished maroon and gold leaf is good for many a kilometre yec.

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ABOVB: The local from Clochemerle-en-Touraine arriving in Sait1te Co/line hauled by 011est No. 103. Viaduct in badtground serves to conceal rhe trackage entrances to this part of the layo11t. Note ticket collector making his way along the outside of the first passenger coach. Viewpoi11t B. TOP RIGRT: 2-4-2 express engi11e No. 2616 rides the Sainte Co/line turntable as the Clochemerle local arrives in Saint4 Colline behind engitle 103. Along the Rue d' Arnboise can be seen the narrow gauge railway offices, police stario11, town gate tower, and Led1ic's. Viewpoi11t B BOTTOM RIGHT: On shed are two engines in black. Est No. 604 (Crampton) sits alongside Etat No. 2616 outside the two stall shed. In backgrout1d, the works of the Socitte mecanique. Viewpoint A.

103 leaves with a whimper, fussily. The route is at first a level ride through the off-baseboard halts of Chan~y and La Moinerie­sur-Brcnnc, through green and silver water-meadows of impos­sible beauty. The scene takes on more rudeness and animation as one approaches Chaillouc, where the earth is scarred and scored by the ravages of a satanic "excavateur", traversing endlessly to scoop up rock in its belted buckets. This one great machine also sorts and grades the stones and delivers the crop into the blue tubs of a metre gauge quarry train. A blue 0-4-0T, impeccably lined out and polished, shunts and jostles and puffs off with a four car train, disappearing out of sight into a deep cutting. Of modem design, the engine bas that Germanic look that identifies its builde.r as Borsig of Berlin; it carries the number '2'. An unusual feature noted is that No. 2 has an air pump, but no air brake hoses -the pump is used for powering lineside quarry machinery only I Cbailloue is not a halt on the Oochemerle branch-the train skirts the vast quarry, sometimes on trestle, and stops at the station of le Mortier-Gumond, named in typical fashion for two villages neither of which it serves. A metre gauge line, kicking in from the right, claims the other face of the island platform. The only buildings here arc the station house itself, a stone water tower, and one of those exquisite little heterosexual facilities they call a chalet de necessitC.-Or maybe just "Jes lieux". A dusty unpaved road winds away to the quarry, and here the saloon dis­gorges its only passenger, one Edouard Fouquet, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, lngcnicur des Mines, who owns all the dig­gings hereabouts. A shiny orange Gauthier-Wehrle, the first car anyone ever owned in the district, wheels him away to his rocks. The metre gauge alongside is the Chcmins de Fer Departemcntaux de l'lndrc-ct-Loire, making its serpentine way from Amboise to Chatcaurcnault by hamlet and roadside inn, by Poce and Sc. Oucn and Autreche, by many a white unclassified road and many a watcr-iriscd pool-and a midway reversing station at Sre. Collinc.

The CFD's lone railcar may often be seen here, for the time­tables arc such that a theoretical connection exists at le M.ortier. The vehicle is an oldish Saurer with slab sides and a dozen or so seats, whose main feature is a built-in turntable jack which lifts

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the whole vehicle up on a precarious pivot so the crew can spin it round. Everyone knows where this olive-green horror is going, but nobody knows what it is-so its side panels say "Autorail Saurer". Only a few people know where it came from, for the CFD, like most rural mette gauge lines, isn't particular where it picks up its stock. The Saurer actually came from the Tramways de l'Andrecbe, 200km and three philosophies away.

After le Mortier the gauges part company again. Where the mette gauge goes isn't certain, for it's still in full view when the local enters a short tunnel and comes out into the urbanity of Ste. Colline, Here the train turns at stteet level alongside the Rue d'Amboise, on the right, and we notice that the metre gauge has managed to infiltrate the street itself. I n fact, one of the first buildings of note is the CFD's office and town station. The stan­dard gauge branch goes on another 2km, to Sainte-Colline-Gare, on the far edge of town, and the only way to come into Ste. Colline by train is to backtrack from Ste. Colline-Gare to Ste.

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RIGHT: Goods train, outboundfrom Sainte Co/line-Gare, parallels the Rue d' Amboise. Locqmotive is Etat 030-863 (see RAILWAY MODELLER May 1958, no it couldn't have been that long ago !). Viewpoint C. LEFT: Plan of layout. BELOW: Map of system.

Colline-Ville on the narrow gauge. And this in spite of the fact that Ste. Colline's engine shed and facilities face right on to the old street, and there's a quasi-official halt for railway personnel only, called Ste. Colline-Triage. But of this more later.

Like many old streets, the Rue d'Amboise is an architectural hotchpotch, where (as the guide book kindly puts it) "chacque epoque a laissc son empreint". The CFD office, like the CFD, is new and brash, a barnlike structure of polychrome brick and cut stone, its pretentious main door flanked by potted shrubs and bronze pseudo flambcaux. Stone finials crown its structural courses, and the one civilising touch is the gay windowbox at the tall window of the stationmasters first-floor flat. On the nearer side of the street, a memorial to the fallen of that 1870 debacle takes the fonn of a bronze-cast grenadier striding purposefully off bis plinth into the surrounding lily-pool. And the plinth itself bears the inevitable Hugoesque aphorisms ....

In serene contrast to the CFD building is the old gendarmerie,

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greystoned and turreted, circa 1650. Civic pride being large in this land, the tricoleur above the door is large also. Round the comer of the gendarmerie, the old Rue St. Lazare leads into the cool dimness of the fortified town, via the 13th century gate tower, just wide enough for one of those newfangled automobiles to squeeze through. The upper

--=~t:==-===--''"'~-..... ..,. windows of the tower (ferme au ~--"f.._ ~,. ••- public) offer a fine view over

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0 '"'··. -~ 4'os the railway yards and down to 'N.~ ! the Brenne river.

J. •. ...i... """-~ Leaning against the other ~~----:,F=-~· ·~....:..-..... '""._·:;~J.... flank of the gateway is a grey

'" plaster-faced building, the .... \ }iJ.l (0..:_._ ,.,,, premises of the elder Leduc,

~~c!!:'::; •::;··~'\3. "!.-Ji> _.,,,.,., \vine merchant of some standing :~lf'~ .·• ;;z \.~·- with an execrable taste in -~ .-• .,., •• :.. ...... ~i. advertising aesthetics. Almost

w.. ' ! ,,,.. ,.......___. < • every square metre of his fa9ade ..,.....i.\ ~-·•" ,.... carries some blurb or other in the

,,,;:~n::e....... • -.• ••• ••• wordy early-century style. There ,.... . .... is, however, just a glimpse of

erudition in the inscription on the frosted glass ofhis street level window, where the local wine is plugged by the timeless exhor­tation in the old French of near­by Chinon " Beuvez tousjours­ne mourrez jamais" .

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But at Lcduc's you can only BUY wine; beyond, at Claude Wagner's Cafe des Deux Gares, you can DRINK it. Better yet, you can drink while watching the trains go past, and take in all the activity of the depot. You can see the engines come home in the pecrle.ss light of a Loire evening, Etat engines in the new olive or the old black, the latter with their parochial nameplates; Quest engines in the lighter green, the Ouest-Etat fusion being still too new for them to have been restyled. There may be Paris-Orleans engines, in from Blois, brave in brass boiler cladding all polished up like it was going out of style (as indeed it is). From further afield, via the TGC (Belt line) come PLM visitors, olive green, redlincd, with strange boiler furniture and the smell of the south; the Est in sober black with red lining and the Nord, usually green though the new chocolate livery shows up once in a while. Rarely, there may be a real foreigner, for the Societe Mccaniquc builds engines, and they often get trial runs out of Stc. Collinc. Big brown brassbound brutes for the Belgian State have been seen, and Adriatica 4 4 O's, and once an Egyptian single wheeler in two shades of red.

On shed now arc two engines in black. A high wheeled 2-4-2, or (as they call it here) a 121, a ccnt-vingt-ct-un, which handles the daily stopping train (omnibus) from Charucs. No 2616 has no lining-out other than a yellow outline to her front buffer beam, but her boiler bands, splashcr beadings and similar trim is all brightly polished. Even the "Etat" and the number 2616 on the buffer beam is in bold bronze relief. She was built in 1893 by Cail and Co in Denain and delivered to the Etat as one of a batch of 19. They were notable for their unusual Bonncfond valve gear which provided independent control of inlet and exhaust. That thc2-4-2 with such long front and rear overhang could have been a success as an express engine in France has often been wondered at; the secret lay in the fact that balancing and suspension was a fine art with French engineers from the very earliest days. 2616 is in the now-obsolete Btat black, and still carries her nameplate, "St. Jean d'Angcly". Another unusual feature is her front axle with its large disc-like wheels. 2616 has many years of service left-two world wars from now she'll still be around this part of the country, relegated to slow locals ... but going I

The other engine is a visitor, No. 604 of the Est, a strange but not unattractive beast in satin black with almost every contour out-

July 1973

lined in red. No. 604 is a notable engine. She is one of the last Cramptons still in service, though you'll have to look very closely to delineate the work of Thomas Russell. She was originally built for the PLM, their No. 22, "la Belgique" and was sold to the Est in 1869. The Est squeezed a whole generation of service out of her before using her as a guinea pig for the twin-drum Flaman boiler on which they pinned great hopes. 604 was rebuilt, shown off at the Great Exposition of 1889, and later that year established an official world speed record of 90mph. Now she rides into Ste. Collinc with her Stephenson gear oscillating bchi.nd massive outer frames. In spite of her unorthodox appearance, her detail is typically Est-the stovcpipe stack, bolted dome with Lcthuillicr safety valve, narrow cab with low side sheets, and the very wide tender tank with its own number in bronze. Like the Etat, Est cngine.s carry their shed name on the sidesheets- No. 604 comes in from Chalons-sur­Marnc.

A goods train passes, going south on the single track, indicating that 103 with the branch local has cleared the junction at Stc. Collinc-Gare. The train is drawn by a handsome English-styled 0-6-0, the first we've seen in the new Etat garb of dark olive. One says English-styled, in spite of the fact that the outside-cylindcred 0-6-0 was just about the rarest locomotive type to run in Britain. But the lines arc clean; the chimney handsomely capuchoned, even a little Wcbbish; the running plate, deep valanccd, at the right level; and the splashes neat. There's commendably little gadgetry draped over her boiler, too. The styling was the result of the appearance of British motive power at the 1889 exhibition-the Ouest engineers took a lesson in aesthetics and turned out several designs which incorporated British styling features. 030-863, for­merly 2247 of the Oucst, was one of 19 mixed traffic engines built in 1891. She's going to be around a Jong time too-a half century from now you'll find her, grimy and rust-streaked, with SNCF plates, at the sad little depot of Dol-dc-Bretagnc between Rcnncs and St. Malo. Today she's bearing the plates of a Norman depot, Fougeres.

Behind her four-wheel tender with the nautical bell and brake wheel stolen from the Nancy Lee rolls a mixed bag of goods stock. First comes an off-white van, all timber suuts and braces and diagonal planks, one of the very first perishable freight can, cooled by Lord knows how much ice. Follows an 1865 Etat open in red-

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brown and black, with a brake cabin and a load of (well, what did you expect?) wine barrels. A rigid frame Quest 20 ton 8 wheeler has a racy yellow 1904 Panhard lashed down on i[s ribbed plat­form; then a wine tanker, or wagon-bifoudre, with t\VO enormous wooden casks strutted and cradled and braced on a Midi steel chassis, and bringing up the rear is another van, a Ouest "couvert" of a type that in a few short years will become notorious to the British Tommy for its announced capacity of 40 men/8 horses. The unrhy[hmic noise of the loose coupled train fades with it into the distance, revealing that during its passage another engine in the new Etat livery has moved out on to the turntable.

We look twice at this one 1 It might well have been conceived by William Buchanan 1 It does not need the Baldwin roundels to proclaim the Philadelphia origin of No. 220-804 "Richelieu" (that nameplate should have come off by now, but senior drivers have their prerogatives 1) She's a big 4-4-0, one of Sam Vauclain's patent compounds with superposed HP and LP cylinders driving a single crosshead each side, one of five built for the old Etat in 1899-1900. Bumped several years ago from the top-link expresses, she now works semifast directs across the Touraine flatlands, coming into Ste. Colline daily with the train from Saintes. As the

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table, one of those with the race ring boarded over completely, rurns with the peculiar hiss and clank of geared steam drive, its power unit comes into view-a little vertical boiler and engine covered by a sort of makeshift gazebo. Very quaint 1

If, declining Wagner's discreet but hospitable proposal of "chambres a l'heure'', you walk up the street, passing first the horribly arty cast-iron fa~de of the Socictc Mecaniquc de l'Indre, you'll find a little postcm gate that lets you sneak round the back of the sheds where the turntable tracks fan out. The shed steam plant is this side of the building, a D.I.Y. job built from what was once a locomotive (though how a P.L.M. boiler got here is a bit of a mystery). Over the ashpit is another surprise-a Webb 3-cylinder compound of the earliest LNWR type. True, it has a Quest smokebox door and stovepipe; true, it has differences in sandbox, brake system, footplate and splasher profile; trUe, it is in Quest green and not LNWR black. But it is indisputably a Webb compound. And so it proves-No. 500 was built by Sharp Stewart in 1884, just to try out the Webb system on the dog, as it were. T he dog got sick, and the Oucst very quickly lost all interest in No. 500, but didn't destroy it. It disappeared from Rouen works early in 1909, and has now turned up in Ste. Colline. Here, an engine is an

Railway Modeller

FACING PAGE, TOP: A1nerican built No. 220-804 on the turn­table. Note two superposed cylinders dn'ving a common cross­head, and the great difference of level between engine and tender footplates. 220-804 has its motor mounted in the tender, driving the coupled wheels through a flexible shaft. Driving wheels are 7 feet in diameter. Viewpoint D. FACING PAGE, BOTTOM LEFT: Webb co111pound No. 500 over the ashpit. In rear can be seen part of the engine shed steam plant. Viewpoint E. FACING PAGE, BOTTOM RIGHT: When Edouard Fouquet bought the first 1notor car in Sainte Co/line, it was delivered by rail and is here showing being zm­loaded, by night, with the aid of the narrow gauge crane truck. Viewpoint G. RIGHT: The quarry train with Borsig 0-4-0T No. 2 on the elevated crusher loading track. Proposals have been 1nade to extend this track to link up with the 1nai11 nietre gauge systen1. Viewpoint G.

engine, and they may get a few more years out of it. But it will never receive the official recognition of an Etat number.

Backing on to the yard are the great warehouses of the Societe Angevine, with their ceaseless comings and goings of various ways ?f carting wine b~ rail. Tank wagons from the South West bring ~ the buJk red wme of HcrauJt, and carry out the lighter, decep­uvely potent coolth of Vouvray. The wagons that arrive here, to be shunted and manhandled over the warehouse tracks by rope ~?capstan are often colourfuJ, sometimes prophetically anachron-1sttc. Get enough of them together and you'd have an illustrated history of the wine cartage business I . Way beyond the turntable, under the bluff, Ste. Colline has a

little one stall narrow gauge shed. The access track comes in from behind the wareh?use, and ~ifurcates in one of those strange th_.ree~way stub points. Two lines lead to the stone engine shed with Its l!rtle column tank and coal stage. There, in a sylvan setting of sunshine and green leaves, sits a tiny locomotive. I t's an 0-6-2T built by SocictcAlsa.cienoe in 1889 for the Chemin de Fer d'Hermes a Beaumont, in the sad wet plains of Oise. No. 3 is on Joan here. Unus~ are the Allan straight link valve gear, worked by retwn cranks mstead of the usual eccentrics; the vacuum brake ejector up b~ the ~ey; and the great width, made possible by the fact that its home bne does not have a single overbridge. Far in the future, on June 6 1944 to be precise, a marauding Spitfire will find N_o. 3 puffing unaware through summer fields, and end her career with a few cannon shells through the boiler. causing damage which a hopelessly penurious railway will be unable to have repaired. Though she'll sit around for ten years after that in the yards at Neuilly-en-Thclle. Today, in green and black to match her en­vironment, she's a proud picture indeed. Furthe.r away yet, where the land falls away toward the placid Brenne, can be seen the ballast.plant.where th.e quarry trains end up. The little blue Borsig comes mto view, pusbihg tubs by the crusher, while from the sunken crusher output track emerges a strange Ouest dummy crankshaft 0-4-0T with a train of little ballast hoppers. It's actually further th~ you think-the peerless Loire light can fool you in such things, but th~ exhaust sounds .arrive on the ear noticeably aft~r the pufflets rise from the engine stack. Under the open sided crusher house the flywheel of the crusher engine turns lazily. Two workmen sit in the discreet shade of a narrow gauge tank car drinking lunch ....

It gets warm in the Loire valley when the June sun gets high. One is reminded by a blatant fence hoarding that "On mange bien chez Wagner I" An excellent idea. A carafe of Vouvray with the Repas Gastronomique, then a carafe of Vouvray under the green striped awning while the early afternoon trains go past, then a carafe of Vouvray .•. trains •.• carafe ..• past. •.

Author's note: Although Ste. Colline is 1/43 scale and comes· in 2-rail "O", Vouvray is in 1/1 scale and comes in litre carafes.

July 1973

ABOVE: Activity at Societe confronts a carafe (the new gia11 Angevine. An out of period economy size) of Vouvray, chat­(1945) wine tank and a 1nuch ting the while with Mlle Sain-111ore in pen'od (1885) refrigerated cassette. M111e Fouquet, from van are capstan-111anoeUt1red past neighboun'ng seat, waves at­the wareho11se loading dock. Seems well, she waves at everyone, her to be some sort of argwnent going ann is stuck in that position. on over there on the extre1ne left. Georges Vache1no11foux, railway BELOW: Metre gauge No. 3, worker, watches proceedings and 0-6-2T ex Hennes-Beaumont, lusts for lunchtin1e. Interesting to trundles slowly along the Rue note that the cef e still offers d'A1nboise under control of rail- Alsatian beer, in spite of current way official. Unexpectedly on Gen11an occupation of Alsace­can1era in background, the author Lorraine

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