… that a photo has miraculously appeared for yesterday’s image. That’s because I took it this morning first thing before I did anything else.

If you take a photo in the evening just after you have finished the cement is never dry and so you can’t really see the pointing so well.

So after that, and after breakfast, I started on my notes for the tacot. And I bet you are wondering what the tacot is. Look in any idiomatic French dictionary and you’ll see that it means “old banger”, as in some kind of disreputable car. But if you translated it to “rattletrap” or “jalopy” then you’ll understand that it refers to the Lignes Economique – the narrow-gauge light railways that littered the Allier at the turn of the 20th Century.

Marianne, the local history expert, found a book on them and has lent it to me, but she wants it back before I go to Canada at the end of the month. And so I only have 10 days or so to make notes.

It’s an exciting book – not because of its style and the way that it’s written – but more the fact that it’s written in some kind of reporter-style sensationalist account. It recounts the history of the duel between a politician and the railway manager and a few other exciting bits (life is not all boring around here, you know) but it’s strangely short on a good deal of technical information that you would have in a British book on the subject. Clearly they are more interested in the social side of events rather than the technical side.

The line at Marcillat en Combraille is featured in it, as you might expect, and it’s a monument to the shortsightedness and pigheadedness of local politicians. The line was proposed to run from the mines at Villefranche through the steelworks at Commentry, down to the limestone at Marcillat en Combraille (my guess about that was a good one) and then on to the main line into the wilderness of South-western France at Evaux-les-Bains. But when they had the quote they decided that it was too expensive and so they would shorten it. They relied upon a standard-gauge railway line frm another company to bring the coal from the mines down a branch line to where the ligne metrique would now start (involving a needless trans-shipment that would cost money and cause delays of course), and then stop the line at Marcillat en Combraille. With Evaux being in a different Departement (the Creuse) it was a case of “if they want it they can pay for it”.

Once the line was opened however, the standard gauge company closed down the branch line and ran their own line down to Commentry instead. Thus, with no through traffic to and from Commentry to the south-west of France, as provided for in the original estimations, the line quietly stagnated

But if you remember the famous bridge that I investigated several weeks ago, I’ve ruled it out as the bridge for the tacot. In the book that Marianne lent me, there’s a diary by a traveller from Paris who took his week’s annual holiday to ride all of the lines of the tacot d’Allier, all 272 kms of them.

He quite clearly describes the route from Commentry and he says that it follows a river valley well to the south (not the north, where my bridge is) of Durdat-Larequille, and makes the point that the village is “away to the north” of the station. Ahh well.

This afternoon I’ve been pointing again and harvesting veg, and tonight I’ve been cooking tea – the same as last night as it happens – and making some damson jam-type of stuff to flavour my plain soya desserts.

I’m enjoying life in the countryside like this.

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