Tag Archives: gare durdat larequille

Saturday 23rd April 2011 – I haven’t done much more today either…

tacot ligne economique gare durdat larequille puy de dome france… although I have made an important discovery. Acting on information received (from Henri at Radio Tartasse as it happens) I managed to track down the railway station for the ligne economique, otherwise known as the tacot, at Durdat – Larequille about eight or so miles from where I live.

And here it is, with grateful thanks to the owner who gave me permission to photograph it.

For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for all that long, you probably won’t know that back at the turn of the 20th Century the Département of the Allier was honeycombed with railway tracks belong to the Lignes Economiques, a system of metre-gauge railways that ran all over the place.

I say that they “ran all over the place” and that isn’t an exaggeration because they very rarely ran anywhere near the villages that they were supposed to serve and the one here at Durdat is well over a mile from the village. In fact one early commentator described the railway stations as “seeming to have the purpose of just adding decoration to the countryside“. The engines wheezed and coughed and spluttered around the countryside, gaining the nickname Tacot, which is French for an “old banger” or “rattletrap” and by 1950 or so they had been all swept away by road transport.

tacot ligne economique gare durdat larequille puy de dome franceYou can see, if you look carefully, the outline of the railway trackbed just in front of the station building.

The line, which ran from the lime kilns at Marcillat to the steel mill at Commentry, was the first to go – being abandoned in 1932 when the standard gauge line from Montlucon to Gouttieres arrived at Marcillat.

And, ironically, the main line was closed in 1939 due to wartime circumstances and never reopened for passengers, meaning that Marcillat was isolated as far as passengers were concerned long before the rest of the ligne economique system was abandoned.

I’ve found most of the stations and some traces of the line but the station at Durdat-Larequille was always elusive, until Henri told me where it was.


All of this came about because I was in Montlucon shopping today. I’ve stocked up with food and all kinds of things, as well as almost everything to finish the water butts (Brico Depot is hopeless) including the nylon stockings for making my sand filters. Why ever didn’t I think of Noz before?

A swim at Neris on the way back, fit the new tap onto the water butts, and that was me, done. But there I am saying tat Brico Depot is hopeless – here they are after all this time of me harassing them and here they are now stocking BULKHEAD FITTINGS – the hollow threaded tube that you pass through the sides of water tanks. I’ve been nagging them about these for ages and now they finally carry them. This will make my life so much easier.

But in Montlucon I had two interesting encounters. A guy at LIDL stopped me and asked me “is that your van outside?” and so we had a long chat about wind turbines and solar panels and he’s coming to see me next week.

There has been a lot of discussion just recently about advertising and people have different opinions about different things, but for me, having corporate colours and a corporate logo, and having clothes that match the van for the colours and the logo – that seems to work for me.

And then on the Brico Depot car park, Julie and Rob came over for a chat and to tell me that they want me to go over and chat to a friend about solar panels. Having a vehicle that is a distinctive shape, a distinctive size and a distinctive colour – that seems to work too.

People can see me coming a long way off, and at the very least it gives them plenty of time to hide.

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Tuesday 21st September 2010 – I’ve been really busy today ….

… and I couldn’t really afford to spend the time as I have so much to do.

This morning we had to go to this radio station in Marcillat en Combraille to discuss the arrangements for the programme they want us to do. And what we discussed was almost exactly the same and no different from the last time we were there. Mind you, the guy we talked to was as interested in the Ligne Economique as I am and he told me that he has ridden on it to Durdat Larequille. And seeing as the line closed in 1932 and he has ridden on it, then he probably has a good excuse for forgetting things.

He was minded by a woman who may well have been his wife, and while she was much more purposeful about things and helped to keep her husband on track, she had hearing issues. So as you might expect, this meeting was a bundle of laughs. But nevertheless we did fit in a good chat about solar panels, the Anglo-French group and Terry’s little business.

Then it was off to the Mairie to give them copies of the photos from Saturday.They are “internet” quality so if they want them at proper press quality (350dpi and all that) they can tell me which ones.

Then off to Marianne’s where I stayed for ages talking about Pionsat-Patrimoine, the Anglo-French group, the newspaper, the Foreign library and all that kind of thing. Things are moving around here, although you wouldn’t believe it.

The next people to have the pleasure of my company were the people at the bank. I warned them that I would be going to Canada shortly and so not to be surprised at my “extraordinary expenditure” and not to cancel my bank card – not like 2002.  I suppose I ought to do that for a couple of other cards too.

I also bumped into Damien from the football club while I was in Pionsat.

Rob and Nicolette were out so I couldn’t give them their photographs (they were out later too) and so after lunch I wrote a few important letters (it’s great having a printer that works!) and carried on with my researches. And I might just be onto something. A company called Tiger Rentals might let me have a Toyota Yaris for just about $1500 CAN – about €1100. It’s said that this figure includes the collision damage waiver and all taxes, allows unlimited mileage and permits travel to the USA and the rest of Canada. Now this sounds too good to be true so I’ve sent them a mail for confirmation.

Watch this space.

Of course I need to pay for the accommodation on top but a Yaris does just about 50mpg whereas a motorhome will do just about 18 to the gallon if you are very lucky before you even think about the extra rental charges and whatever charges you might have to pay for camping.

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Thursday 16th September 2010 – You’ve probably noticed …

… 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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