Saturday 12 September 2026 - Travel to Paris

We took an early TGV from Basle to Paris Gare de Lyon.  The above screenshot from my speed app shows we were travelling well over 300 kmph in places. In other places we travelled much slower because part of the Paris - Dijon section was closed for maintenance.

After checking into our hotel we walked out to the Rue Daumesnil, a few blocks from the station. This has the old brick railway viaduct which stretches for a long way. It formed the entrance to a railway terminus which was torn down for the construction of the Bastille Opera house. The viaduct has been retained with businesses in the arches and a wonderful urban park above.

Here are the pictures I took in 2011

https://www.flickr.com/photos/colinchurcher/albums/72157626711585936/with/5716328700

The Paris elevated park on the old railway viaduct—known as the Coulée verte René-Dumont or Promenade Plantée—was inaugurated in 1993 with the first section opening in 1989 and full completion achieved in 1994.

We walked along to the SNCF station at Bercy. It was completely empty (six stub end tracks). here sees to be about one train an hour, (this was a Saturday)

This was the only train we saw at Bercy,

Finally, this evening Paul and I had dinner at Le Train Bleu. Just going in is an interesting experience of a restaurant that was for those travelling to thr south coast over 100 years ago.



This is the end of this blog. \you should assume that Air France will get me back to Ottawa in one piece, it has been a wonderful trip, many thanks to Paul, 
Maybe this is my final trip to Switzerland





.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Wednesday - Zurich Hauptbahnhof Part One

Image
Zurich Hauptbahnhof  Paul has prepared some extensive notes and photos of the Zurich Hauptbahnhof.  This will be in several parts.  The busiest station in Switzerland is Zurich Hauptbahnhof (Zurich HB) which is used primarily by the SBB. It has 26 tracks serving almost 3000 trains daily and it is one of the busiest stations in the world. It was built in the 1870s and is a main shopping destination as well as a transport hub. There are three levels for platforms and the "Shopville" shopping plaza.  The river Sihl river passes right through the station with platforms passing above and below the river. This shows the general layout of the station with the surrounding tram tracks shown in purple Tracks 3 to 18 are terminal tracks located at ground level, served by two side platforms and seven island platforms. These are used by long-distance trains from throughout Switzerland, and by international trains. Tracks 21 and 22 are underground terminal tracks, served by a sing...
Read more

Friday 12 September 2025 - The Last Hurrah

Image
Today we left Yverdon-les-Bains and traveled back to Zurich in preparation for return to Canada tomorrow. In the morning we took an ICN through Neuchatel to Oensingen. We left four minutes late but with a tight throttle and the banking on these trains we left Neuchatel on time - it was an exciting ride. At Oensingen there was quite a lot to see. As well as the main line freight a single manned diesel switcher went across the main line a couple of times to pick up empty cars.  The two narrow gauge trams from Solothurn and Langenthal came in and reversed.  Main line freight The standard gauge line to Balstall was using an SBB train with TPN markings.  In addition there was a magpie poking around on the ground, and a couple of kites flying around.  We went on to Olten for lunch at the M igros restaurant.  After lunch we took a short trip to Daniken on the main line. Just after we got there we saw three freight trains with Re 420s on them and a further SBB Vectron o...
Read more

Coming Home - Wrap Up - Sunday 15 Setember 2024

Image
This video, by Noel Wyler,  shows what we have just missed. Last Saturday (14 September) the Oensingen Balsthal  Railway organized an event to commemorate 60 years of the Re 4/4 locomotives. They brought together 24 of them and ran them as one train. Paul and I flew home on KLM from Schiphol Airport. We took a train from Den Haag directly to the airport. The trip back was marred by a couple with a young boy who was obviously teething. He cried almost continuously for the full six hours. I found I could tune him out when I dug deep into the KLM sound system and found a treasure trove of classical music. Bach violin concertos, Mozart piano concerto No. 23, Beethoven symphonies, Schuman etc. We survived the stupidities at the entrance of the Montreal airport and caught the KLM bus back to Ottawa where we arrived precisely on time. A good ending to a wonderful, tremendous, trip  
Read more