Hello and bonjour!
Have you ever stood on a bridge in, for example, the chic Paris suburb of Saint-Mandé,
looked back towards the city and thought,
huh, that’s strange...
straight ahead that looks like a blocked-up abandoned old tunnel
and it’s almost as if that’s where the trains used to go
before the 1970s construction of Line A of the regional express network
diverted them down the new deeper tunnel curving off to the right
like that train just there.
I wonder where the old tunnel goes?
Well unless you’re me
then probably not
but we’re here now so we might as well find out.
This is the story of the lost line to Bastille.
Doesn’t that kind of give it awa
This is the Place de la Bastille in central Paris,
where thousands of tourists come every year
to not see the Bastille.
The notorious prison used to stand right here,
but these days there’s nothing left,
it was completely destroyed in the Revolution.
Well, not totally completely, there are still a few bits hidden around here if you
know where to look –
but basically what you’re seeing is where the Bastille was, and now isn’t.
And of course, we’re not here to not see that.
What we’re here not to see is this.
*Operatic singing, not performed by Tim*
Oh what?!
I thought this was going to be a video about disused railways?
We finally get a video I think we might want to watch of his,
and it's about the opera??
I don’t want to watch him going to the opera.
No wait!
This *is* the Opéra Bastille, one of the largest opera houses in the world,
but what we’re *not* looking at is the old Bastille railway terminus,
which stood here until 1984 when it was demolished to make way for the opera.
And although the station itself has gone,
there’s still a whole disused railway to explore
and it starts right here.
This is the viaduct that used to carry the tracks into the station.
It is over a kilometre long and has 71 arches,
many of which are now occupied by cafés and art shops,
which is why it’s now known as the viaduc des arts, or the viaduct of the arts.
It’s not a complicated language.
But on top of that, the old railway itself has been turned into a kind of elongated elevated
city park
and if you climb up this staircase you can walk the entire thing.
You might have seen it before – it appears in the classic film Before Sunset,
and plenty of youtubers have been along here,
but nearly all of them call it a beautiful walkway that was built on a disused railway.
Whereas on this channel we correctly call it
a beautiful disused railway that has a walkway on it.
The line was opened in 1859 and trains ran the short distance from here out to the suburb
of Varenne.
It was primarily a commuter railway serving the communities along the river Marne,
although thanks to a connecting link with the main line coming out of the Gare de l’Est,
it could also handle freight from anywhere in eastern France.
But the main reason it got built
was the huge military fort at Vincennes, 4 stops down the line.
So this railway was strategically important
because it allowed troops to be moved quickly into central Paris,
or out to the eastern border
in the unlikely event that Napoleon III fancied declaring war on Prussia in say, the next
10 or 11 years.
Of course he ended up losing not only the war but also a large chunk of eastern France.
Good thing the railway wasn’t relying on that freight traffic really.
Luckily, it was beating all expectations for passenger numbers,
proving as popular with commuters during the week as it was with Parisians popping out
to Vincennes at the weekend.
In fact it was so popular they had to run what look like some pretty hastily-constructed
double-decker carriages,
and the line was extended several times, eventually finishing at Marles-en-Brie in 1893.
By 1900 it was carrying nearly 20 million passengers a year and by 1930, over 30 million.
But then the Great Depression hit.
And in the next few years, commuter and leisure traffic both fell off a cliff.
It wasn’t helped by the extension of the metro to a competing station in Vincennes
in 1934.
By 1936 the number of passengers had dropped by more than half.
It was about this time that the French authorities started looking at the idea
of a cross-city railway through Paris that would link suburban networks together,
a bit like Berlin S-Bahn of 1930
or the London Crossrail of
Anyway
there were discussions to modernise and electrify the Bastille route
and extend it into and underneath Paris to test the idea.
It was a plan that could have transformed the line
but for various reasons eventually a different line was chosen instead,
and although it was a huge success,
unfortunately then the second world war happened, and that put the whole project on pause.
By the time it was back on the table, it was the 1960s,
and meanwhile the Bastille line had been dwindling away with almost no investment for 30 years.
But when the plans were published there was good news:
the section from Vincennes out to the suburbs was going to become part of the new RER regional
express network and would be completely modernised.
A brand-new tunnel would be then be opened underneath Paris, so that trains coming into
Vincennes could continue across the city from east to west.
But that did mean it was the end for the passenger service into Bastille.
And on the night of 14th December 1969, a veteran steam engine departed the grand old station
and trundled away along the viaduct for the last time.
At the other end of the viaduct, the train would have made a brief stop at the Gare de Reuilly,
which was the first station out from Bastille.
The station building here has survived;
it’s now both a Multi Service Information Point
and a huge disappointment to posh British alcoholics.
Meanwhile this is where the line’s big freight yard was,
and freight trains still came here up until 1985,
when the whole site was sold off and replaced by parks and residential development.
It was at the same time that work was started to convert the old viaduct into the elevated
greenway that it is today;
when it opened in 1993 it was the first of its kind in the world.
It’s where New York got the idea for the High Line.
But from here onwards the route is much more underground than overground.
We go through a sequence of tunnels that have been decorated by artists
with a great range of skill levels
and even when you emerge back into the open air,
at the former site of a station literally called Bel Air,
you’re still down in a trench below street level.
We’re now approaching the edge of Paris proper and there is a junction here
where a branch splits off and curves away to the right;
now, pay attention class:
edge of Paris...
disused railway...
...remind you of anything?
This was the old connection to the Petite Ceinture
and it’s all walkways now
so instead of sticking to the main route,
you can take the branch,
have a little wander back up along the Petite Ceinture,
and rejoin the Bastille line when you cross over it.
From here it’s only a short walk further along through the trees before a graffiti
covered fence blocks the path
and we find ourselves at the end of the route.
It’s not the most glamorous finishing line for our 3.7km trek,
but it does solve a little mystery.
Because as we climb the spiral staircase that leads us back up to street level
it turns out we haven’t just found a graffiti covered fence,
we have in fact found
the other end of the abandoned old tunnel.
If you’d like to explore the old Bastille line next time you’re in Paris,
it is a public space that’s open during the daytime
and it is of course completely free.
The whole route is wheelchair accessible,
if you’re on a bicycle it’s a bit more restricted, you can do most of the route
but not the elevated viaduct section.
For those of you who want more videos about disused railways do check out Paul and Rebecca’s channel
where they are trying to visit every single disused station in Britain.
There will be a link on screen in a few seconds
but meanwhile thank you for watching
and I will see you soon.