European Railroad Discussion > Bourg Sainte Maurice, France

This is a lovely small town at the end of a branch line. It's served by local trains, plus TGVs from Paris Gare de Lyon. Just steps from the platforms is the terminal of a funicular that gets one up to Les Arcs, a huge ski area.

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You can see the variety of service...

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From sleek to blocky.

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There's even Eurostar service to Brussels and Amsterdam.

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The old station house and the new one. Thanks for looking.

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 Nice photos! Glad to finally see some posts on the European Board. Wife and I will be heading that way in three weeks. Nice to get some ideas on where to go.

Valleyman

Nice set thanks. Do you know what service the loco hauled set was on?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/25 12:50 by 86235.

86235 Wrote:
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> Nice set thanks. Do you know what service the loco
> hauled set was on?

Sorry, but no. There are really a lot of arrivals and departures. It's not the size of the town, it's the popularity of the nearby ski resorts, that bring so much traffic.

Thanks for the photos!  Especially the "Nez Caisse" in #5!

dwatry Wrote:
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> Thanks for the photos!  Especially the "Nez
> Caisse" in #5!

I'll second that! They are my favorite French motors.

What an interesting location, at the stub end of what is essentially a long, mostly 80 kph (55 mph) branch into the Alps, with some 110 kph (68 mph) track, and a few relatively short stretches of 140 kph (87 mph). Including a spiral at Moutiers, no less.. I assume that the high speed trains leave the LGV high speed line at the junction near Grenay, just southeast of Lyon.

And do the trains reverse direction at Albertville, where there is a trailing point junction and no wye connection? I can't see any other way on the map (Open Railway Map) for them to proceed past Albertville unless they do.

So neat to see high speed French and Eurostar trainsets running like that to a stub-end terminal high in the Alps to directly serve a major ski area. Makes perfect sense to me. But here in the US, people would think it's nuts. Even the Amtrak Winter Park Express doesn't do anything quite that crazy, taking a mainline route to an intermediate station location, then reversing back to Denver. About the only equivalent I can think of here would be Union Pacific ski-service trains pre-Amtrak on the long branch from Shoshone, Idaho (west of Pocatello) to the famous Sun Valley ski resort near Ketchum, Idaho. And that's all 60 years ago or longer in the past, and well before the high-speed train era. I've mentioned that operation to skier friends and they were absolutely incredulous. Even when they knew about ski resort-focused services in Europe, and had used them, although I don't think to Bourg Ste. Maurice.

Just goes to show again how stupid and backward we are here in the US. Once again, Europe shows us the way to a fully integrated transport system. But we're too blind to see and understand for the most part. And with Trump and Elon, we're not getting any smarter. Unfortunately.

MC



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/25 09:27 by ironmtn.

ironmtn Wrote:
>
> And do the trains reverse direction at
> Albertville, where there is a trailing point
> junction and no wye connection? I can't see any
> other way on the map (Open Railway Map) for them
> to proceed past Albertville unless they do.
>
Yes, they do. So you can start out riding backwards and suddenly, you're facing front.

ironmtn Wrote:

> So neat to see high speed French and Eurostar
> trainsets running like that to a stub-end terminal
> high in the Alps to directly serve a major ski
> area. ...

The variety is astounding. The blue regional EMUs, the old loco hauled passenger cars -- really comfortable, but hard to get on and off with suitcases. TGVs from Paris. Even a few Eurostars from Brussels/Amsterdam, and I saw one Italian HST connected to a TGV. Just steps away is the platform for the funicular up to Les Arcs.

Notice the letter "R" as either a prefix or
a suffix to the locomotive number in photos
#5 and #9, these locomotives are BB22200
meaning they were built to operate on
either 1.5 kV DC or 25 kV 50 Hz AC.
The "R" means they are now restricted to
operating on 1.5 kV DC lines only. As the
last built, and thus the newest, of the 
locomotives built with the Nez Casse body
they are running out their last miles with
the equipment to operate under AC OHE
removed or inoperative.

Spent a day skiing at Les Arcs about 35 years ago after taking an overnight conventional train from Paris with couchette accommodation.

IIRC, I traveled at the end of the day of skiing to Geneva, with a change of train somewhere along the way to one of the old Talgo trains that
began its journey in Spain.

Hakk