Hello and bonjour !
We are back in Noisy-le-Grand,
home, of course, to the abandoned SK4000 mini pod metro line thing,
because since we were last here,
a few things have been happening.
Firstly, the town of Noisy has opened a new exhibition about the SK4000,
and I thought we’d come down and check it out.
Secondly, they’ve decided to reopen the abandoned old station
for a limited number of guided tours;
unfortunately the initial dates are already fully booked,
but there is a chance they might announce some more
– so more info about that in a moment.
And finally, I was very kindly invited to join one of these tours myself
and we’re going to get a special opportunity to see something
that we didn’t get to see last time.
- They've given me permission to, er...
explore the rest of the tunnel!
So hopefully today we can answer some of
the questions you had in the comments of the last video,
like, what happened to the station at the other end of the line?
All of that coming up,
but first the exhibition!
I’m here today for the official launch night,
and a big thank you to Téo from Noisy-le-Grand town hall for inviting me down.
The exhibition is by nature fairly small, but it’s really well put together,
and I’m not just saying that because they gave me free champagne.
There’s a series of panels and videos that take you through the story of the SK4000,
they go into much more detail about how exactly the system worked,
what happened to the other SK systems that came before and after this one,
and what the plans are for the future of the abandoned station here in Noisy.
The exhibition runs until the 26th of November,
so I’m well aware most of you watching this will never be able to make it,
but it’s very much worth seeing if you happen to be in the Paris area in the next few weeks.
And alongside the exhibition,
the council has also announced some extra guided tours of the abandoned station.
The tours are run by two brilliant volunteers called Pierre and Romain
and they’re completely free of charge;
and perhaps because of this, they got booked up almost immediately.
However, there is always a small chance that spaces will become available
or the council will decide to add extra dates because of the demand.
If you’re interested, you can try calling Noisy town hall on this number
or you can ask to join the Noisy SK Facebook group
where Pierre and Romain post updates on the tours
as well as a load of old photos and videos that you won’t find anywhere else.
I’ll put all the links and details in the description.
And obviously, goes without saying,
the tours, the exhibition, and the Facebook page are all in French
so it will help if you speak the language.
And finally, as I mentioned,
I went and joined one of these guided tours myself,
and a big merci to Pierre and Romain for inviting me down.
Now of course we’ve already seen pretty much everything there is to see in the station itself,
or at least you have if you saw my last video,
so I won’t show you all of that again.
But there is one thing that we didn’t get see last time…
- They’ve given me permission to, er…
explore the rest of the tunnel!
Oh that’s dark.
That’s very dark.
Ok my camera is clearly struggling with this,
so here’s some footage from 1997
to show you the tunnel that we’re walking down.
You can see back then it was very brightly lit,
and that’s because the pods themselves didn’t have any lights,
they just had big windows to let the light in from outside.
In fact I think I’m right in saying there were no electronics on board at all;
for example, when the doors open automatically at the station,
that’s triggered by something on the track, not something on board.
All of this made the pods simpler, more lightweight, and easier to maintain.
Anyway, back to the tunnel!
So I’m about 100m down the tunnel now, I think…
You can hear the rumbling of the RER trains going through the tunnel next to us...
This tunnel was built completely parallel to the RER tracks.
Alright not completely parallel, there was a little curve just before the end.
But one thing I learned from the exhibition is that, apart from that final curve,
the rest of the tunnel had been here since the 1970s.
It was put in during the early development of Noisy,
at the same time as the RER,
and no-one I’ve spoken to seems to know exactly what it was originally intended for.
Whatever the plan was,
the authorities left it empty and unused for years
before they finally installed the SK4000.
And then they left that empty and unused as well!
I think we’re nearly at the end of the tunnel now…
there’s just loads of stuff on the floor...
left behind since I don’t know when.
And now we’re going uphill a bit.
I think… are we coming to the end here?
Yeah, there’s just... there we go...
...just a huge pile of earth.
And then behind this, there’s just a wall, apparently.
Yes - for those of you who were asking "what happened to the station at the other end?",
unfortunately it was demolished in 2018 to make way for a residential development,
and even the underground parts of it were destroyed.
So this is as far as we can go.
And just to run that past you again,
the station that was built for a construction project that never happened,
was then demolished because of a construction project that did happen.
And that’s about it for today!
I hope you enjoyed this little extra video from Noisy,
and if you want even more old photos, archive footage, and updates,
please do check out Pierre and Romain’s Facebook group.
The link will be in the description,
and as always, thank you very much for watching,
and I’ll see you soon.