Hello and salut!
And welcome back to the Belgian city of Charleroi
for a little extra video here.
Which to be honest, I wasn’t planning to do.
But then, at the beginning of my last video
a few of you spotted something strange in the background behind me…
“This is the metro line that never opened”
Yes, never mind that Tim –
what's that crossover doing there?
It looks like the tracks just suddenly swap sides for no obvious reason.
Why would a railway ever need do that?
Well congratulations, because you’ve just unlocked Part Two of the Charleroi Metro story!
And this is where it gets really weird.
Right, let’s get the basics out of the way first.
The reason this crossover is here
is because, very simply, they needed trains to switch
from running on the right-hand side
to running on the left-hand side.
It’s the kind of thing you might see in a place
where two completely different railways meet each other,
perhaps on an international border for example.
But this is Line 5 of the Charleroi metro
connecting with the other lines of the Charleroi metro.
Why on earth didn’t they just run all the lines on the same side?
Well it all starts with an argument in the 1960s.
Back then there are two big companies running public transport in Charleroi;
there’s the S.T.I.C., or "STIC",
who are the city’s local urban transport company,
and the SNCV,
or Vicinal Tramways,
who are the Belgian national company.
And although they’re both public companies, and ultimately both owned by the state,
there is a bit of a rivalry going on between them.
Anyway,
when the Belgian government announces plans to build an 8-line Metro network in Charleroi,
6 of the proposed lines are in Vicinal territory,
but the 2 in the east are in STIC territory.
And long story short,
the government decides the two companies will have to share the network;
the STIC would run trains on the two eastern branches,
and the Vicinal would operate the rest of the system.
That meant the two historic rivals were suddenly going to have to find a way of working together.
And to give you an idea of how well that went:
they couldn’t even agree what side to run the trains on.
The Vicinal wanted to run them on the right,
because parts of the network were going to reuse their old tramlines
that share a street with road traffic
and therefore have to stay on the right.
But the STIC wanted to run their trains on the left.
Why?
Well.
Traditionally, STIC trams ran on the right-hand side of the road like everyone else in Belgium.
The vehicles had one driver’s cab at the front,
and they only had doors on the right,
because that’s the side where people get on and off.
Now for what it’s worth,
all the new vehicles for the Charleroi metro were bidirectional
- cab at both ends, doors on both sides -
but for various reasons,
the STIC wanted to be able to run unidirectional trams on their lines as well.
The problem was, all the new metro stations were going to have island platforms;
so if you sent a unidirectional tram down there
the doors will be on the wrong side and no one can get on or off.
*angry Belgian noises*
The only way that they could use unidirectional trams,
(if you wanted the driver to be at the front)
was to run everything on the left.
*more angry Belgian noises*
So fast forward to the 1980s, and Charleroi is building a metro
where most of the lines run on the right,
but the two eastern branches, the future Line 4 and Line 5, run on the left.
So that’s when they put the crossover here, right?
Nope!
Having agreed to run on opposite sides,
the two companies still disagreed on a bunch of other stuff,
including what they were going to do at the point where the two systems met.
A crossover's only one option; there are other ways of doing it.
And here’s the kicker.
Line 5, as we saw in the last video, was famously half-completed
and the first four stations were ready for passengers.
It could have opened in the 1980s!
But they were still bickering about how to link it to the rest of the network
when funding was cut from the whole project.
So… wait.
When exactly *did* they build the crossover?
In the early 1990s, the STIC and the French-speaking half of the Vicinal
were merged into one company called the TEC,
and when they relaunched the project to complete Line 4,
they went ahead and installed a crossover on both the old STIC lines.
But...
why did they bother with Line 5?
Well they hadn’t given up on the idea that it might eventually open.
To this day, the line still receives basic maintenance,
the overhead power lines are still live, and the signalling still works.
(Apparently, that’s also partly because one of the
big electricity generators for the whole metro system
was built on Line 5.)
If you’re watching this in the 2030s,
the whole thing might have actually opened by now.
If you’re from the future please let us know in the comments
But that’s the story of the weird crossover.
And there’s still some crazy stuff that I've had to leave out,
but I think that’s probably enough about the Charleroi Metro for now.
If you do want to know more, please check out the pinned comment on my last video
and the replies to it.
Meanwhile, a big shout out to Squizie3 for posting that comment
and also helping me research this video.
And as always,
thank you everyone for watching,
and I will see you soon.