Tag Archives: steel mill

Tuesday 29th November 2011 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again.

And if I keep on spending it like this I won’t have any left.

First thing was to go to Marcillat in order to record the Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Tartasse with Liz.

And from there it was to Montlucon.

At LIDL I bought nothing out of the ordinary but at Auchan I bought as well as the usual stuff a little present for Rob and Nicolette for having looked after me, and also a battery pack seeing as all mine are duff. There it was on sale and I said that at €29 it would be a good deal. But with an air compressor included and selling at €22.95 it was an even better deal.

At Brico Depot they had the plywood that I wanted. And 2mm thicker, it cost €9 less than at the other place. And so I now have all that I need. I’m not sure why though because I don’t have the scaffolding to fit it now, as I said yesterday.

What I can be doing instead though is to build the greenhouse but would you believe I forgot to buy the perspex for the roof.

D’ohhh! That was no good.

There’s an issue over my tubing as well. I can buy it from the steel mill at Montlucon but would you believe that a huge place like that (so huge it has its own railway network and locomotive – which you have seen before) they don’t have a bender.They’ve given me an idea where to go and so I’ll follow that up.

And I have my window! Hooray!!!! That’s safely in the van now.

But here’s a thing.

You’ll have noticed without doubt that I have been strangely quiet just recently on the subject of the front door that I would be fitting to the house. But there’s a reason for that. Brain of Britain has done it again and bought a door that opens the wrong way. Mind you, it was at a give-away price in a sale so there’s no harm done there.

But a casual chat with the sales people at Lapeyre revealed that the “exotic wood” selection – the selection from which I have chosen all of my windows – is being discontinued in February. And as a result, they’ve started a clearance sale. The door that matches my windows – a big one with double glazing all the way down the front, is just €374.

That’s too good a deal to miss and so I have bitten the bullet. Now I shall have to get working.

At Rob and Nicolette’s I gave them their prezzy and thanked them for their help the other day. I was grateful for the effort that they took.

But with me forgetting all sorts of things today, this bang on the head doesn’t seem to have helped me any.   

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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 19th April 2011 – I’ve been in the garden again this afternoon.

This time though it’s the heavy engineering stuff.

You may remember that between the greenhouse and the mega-cloche was a patch of land covered by a tarpaulin – where I was going to erect the aluminium greenhouse. But following a donation by Simon of the old windows from his workshop, I changed my plans.

I promised the aluminium greenhouse to Liz and Terry and I was planning to build a balloon-framed structure that I could fit the windows into.

digging base for greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnyway, to cut a long story short, this afternoon I cleaned up all of the rubbish that had accumulated there, removed the bits of aluminium greenhouse, rolled up the tarp and set to digging out a square trench.

With the land sloping downhill quite steeply there, I’ve had to dig out so that the square trench is more-or-less level, and I’m setting a row of breeze blocks into the soil there – the purpose of those being to make some kind of horizontal level and keep the wooden frame of the greenhouse out of the damp soil.

Once I’ve finished the breeze blocks I can make a start on building the framework for the greenhouse. The back wall will be covered in the cheap tongue and grooving that is on sale at Brico Depot – I’ve tons of that. The roof will be plastic corrugated sheeting like the verandah, although I’ll invent a system of roof openings to allow the air to circulate, and I’ll build a door for the uphill side. Everything else will be Simon’s windows.

This morning though Liz and I were in the recording studio at Radio Tartasse doing our programmes for the month of May. And Henri, the old guy who helps out there, had a chat with me about the Tacot – the old narrow-gauge railway that used to run from the lime kilns at Marcillat to the steelworks at Commentry. He showed me on the map the traces of the old line, and said that next month he would bring me all of the paperwork that he has on it, including a book on the subject.

Won’t that be exciting?

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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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Friday 3rd September 2010 – In a change to the advertised programme ….

abandoned railway station les ancizes st georges de mons puy de dome france…. I had a day off today. Totally unplanned but somehow things just seem to work out that way. But first, just have a look at this picture. And what do you make of it? You might need to enlarge it first.

The giveaway clues are in between the two rails in centre pic and also in the top left corner.

What has happened is that at some time or other some kind of railway conveyance has come off the rails at the points just here and ridden along the sleepers for a long way. And no-one has bothered to repair the damage.

abandoned railway station les ancizes st georges de mons puy de dome franceWhere I am in fact is at the old Les Ancizes-St Georges de Mons railway station, where I have been for a prowl around this evening. This is on the abandoned railway line between Lapeyrouse and Volvic – the one that crosses over the Viaduc des Fades and which was closed in dramatic fashion a couple of years ago when they “suddenly discovered” that the viaduct was unsafe. But you know me and my conspiracy theories – I reckon that the closure was planned for years and the lack of maintenance along the line merely proves it. And not replacing these clearly-badly-damaged sleepers just adds more fuel to the fire.

So how come I had a day off when it wasn’t planned?

This morning I went to the doctor’s to have my football medical signed off – if I want to play I need a certificate. As it happened, it cost me nothing as all my details of the medical I had for my referee’s test were on file.

So that was good.

Then I decided that seeing as I was in St Eloy I would do my shopping. and LIDL was good too.

I needed some more identity photos so I went to Carrefour where I planned to finish my shopping. But no photo booth!
“We don’t have one” they said.
“So where do people go for their identity photos?”
“The professional photographer” she said – and watched me splutter.
“Anyway” she added “he’s closed until 15:00”
Sod this for a game of soldiers – a 50-mile round trip where I drove to the Intermarche at Commentry – I know that they have one. Mind you, I half-expected it to be closed for lunch or the machine out of order but no – it worked, and that must be a first.

They aren’t have having their money’s worth out of me, running around to collect all this paperwork.

narrow gauge abandoned railway station ligne economique tacot marcillat en combraille allier franceOn the way back and passing through Marcillat en Combraille I went to look at a building that I noticed when I was with Liz the other evening. Now is this a former railway station or is it a former railway station? You can even see the platform.

In fact what we here was the terminus of the Ligne Economique, – the narrow-gauge railway that ran between Marcillat en Combraille and Commentry.

narrow gauge abandoned railway station ligne economique tacot marcillat en combraille allier franceCommentry is a steel-making town and there was a huge lime furnace just a mile or so away from here, so it’s no surprise that there was a railway line between the two towns. The station building here is in a direct line with the old lime furnaces, but modern building has obscured whatever track there might have been in between the two.

The narrow gauge track was ploughed up in 1930 when they built the standard gauge line over its track bed, so when the main line service was suspended in 1939, Marcillat en Combraille lost its passenger service completely, even though the rest of the tacot system staggered on into the 1950s

So while I was here in Marcillat en Combraille I went to the local Mairie and the secretary agreed to talk to the people who know, to see what help might be given for my proposed research

At Pionsat I dropped off my forms at the Football Club, only to find that I can’t find the receipt for the referee’s stuff, and I’ll need that if I want the club to pay it. I remember seeing it floating around the van so I picked it up to put somewhere safe. That says it all really.

So after a solar shower I went to St George for my HGV medical, and here’s another doctor who tells me that there is nothing dropping off quite yet. Mind you, he had me doing some funny things like standing on one leg with my eyes closed and all of that. And as I’m after a change of licence and an International licence he gave me my file back and told me to take it myself to Clermont Ferrand on Monday.

abandoned railway station les ancizes st georges de mons puy de dome franceOn the way back I went for a prowl around the deserted and abandoned railway station at Les Ancizes and took a pile of photos, a couple of of which you have seen above. In his book First and Last Loves” John Betjeman wrote that “Nothing is more empty than a deserted fairground”. But that was because in his day there weren’t any deserted railway stations. He’d change his tune if he were alive today.

And after coffee at Liz and Terry’s I came home just in time for tea at 21:00. And now you see what I mean. Tomorrow I shall have to work to catch up.

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