Rang de Fliers TGV?

[reuban]

Any ideas why Rang de Fliers sees a TGV albeit "TERGV" service? It's the start/end station and is a very small town. The train also stops at minor stop Etaples Le Touquet before continuing along the classic lines to Bologne & Calais Frethun, LGV Nord to Lille Europe, and Paris GDN.
There is an Intercites train available to GDN which takes a similar time and stops at Large City Amiens, as well as Intercites and TER trains to Calais & Bologne

Ive included a map
Grey shows the TGV Line
Green is Intercites


Seems like a strange and random route, considering the TGV runs at classic line speeds to Calais, and you have to go back on yourself considerably

 

[Gloster]

I think it was part of a policy by the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region to promote local integration/improve links to local towns, etc. There was also probably an element of “Why can’t we have a TGV too?” by local politicians. Rang-du-Fliers is the last town before the border and I think that the service is subsidised by the region, so it serves its towns, but goes no further.

 

[30907]

Any ideas why Rang de Fliers sees a TGV albeit "TERGV" service? It's the start/end station and is a very small town. The train also stops at minor stop Etaples Le Touquet before continuing along the classic lines to Bologne & Calais Frethun, LGV Nord to Lille Europe, and Paris GDN.
There is an Intercites train available to GDN which takes a similar time and stops at Large City Amiens, as well as Intercites and TER trains to Calais & Bologne

Ive included a map
Grey shows the TGV Line
Green is Intercites


Seems like a strange and random route, considering the TGV runs at classic line speeds to Calais, and you have to go back on yourself considerably

Welcome!

1. Boulogne is the primary destination, and as Gloster says it's partly political/PR. The extension to Etaples and RdF (which serve a well-developed stretch of coastline) is in marginal time. I notice that TGVs to Calais-Ville have pretty much disappeared.
2. The LGV provides a fast link to Lille which is regionally very important - and I wouldn't mind betting there's a significant commuter traffic from the coast which the TERGV taps. (BTW Amiens is in Picardie, and much less significant, though the two Regions have now been merged.)
3. Until very recently, the historic route via Amiens was one of SNCF's "poor relations" - Corail stock, diesel north of Amiens - and was neither fast nor frequent for Paris. That has now changed, but will have been a factor in introducing and expanding the TGV.

I suspect that, if SNCF were starting from scratch, Lille-Boulogne (and -Dunkerque) via the LGV would be operated with the equivalent of our class 395 Javelins - and Paris would be entirely via Amiens. But imagine the outcry if Boulogne were to lose its TGV...

 

[popeter45]

i believe Rang de Fliers is the terminus is because that's where the electrification from Calais ends
if Rang de Fliers to Amines was Electrified I could for sure see it made a circular service like the strawberry hill services run by SWR here

 

[Ianno87]

i believe Rang de Fliers is the terminus is because that's where the electrification from Calais ends
if Rang de Fliers to Amines was Electrified I could for sure see it made a circular service like the strawberry hill services run by SWR here

Yes, the electrification ends at Rang du Filiers.

 

[Gloster]

I think Rang-du-Fliers is the end of the electrification because it was the last station in the Nord-Pas-du-Calais, which was prepared to support the electrification. Beyond was Picardie, which wasn’t. I think that traffic beyond, at least as far as Abbeville, is fairly sparse.

 

[reuban]

Cheers for the replies, does anyone know what locomotive runs on the Paris-Amiens-Etaples-Bologne Intercites services? Does an Electric take it to Amiens and then a diesel the rest of the way?

 

[popeter45]

according to this video the Corails where pulled by BB67400's then a BB22200 pulls it to Paris

 

[Gloster]

I think they now use B84500 Coradia Regiolis [should be an acute accent on the e] bi-modes.

 

[MarcVD]

Cheers for the replies, does anyone know what locomotive runs on the Paris-Amiens-Etaples-Bologne Intercites services? Does an Electric take it to Amiens and then a diesel the rest of the way?

That's how it used to be until quite recently but now bi-mode multiple units have taken over.

 

[Peter Kelford]

Any ideas why Rang de Fliers sees a TGV albeit "TERGV" service? It's the start/end station and is a very small town. The train also stops at minor stop Etaples Le Touquet before continuing along the classic lines to Bologne & Calais Frethun, LGV Nord to Lille Europe, and Paris GDN.
There is an Intercites train available to GDN which takes a similar time and stops at Large City Amiens, as well as Intercites and TER trains to Calais & Bologne

Ive included a map
Grey shows the TGV Line
Green is Intercites


Seems like a strange and random route, considering the TGV runs at classic line speeds to Calais, and you have to go back on yourself considerably

Well there's another reason. Rang de Fliers is the end of 'the wires'.

 

[Calthrop]

I suppose it's too fanciful to perceive Rang du Fliers's being a point of some significance, at some level in the minds of those who run France's railways (hence the phenomena discussed in this thread): as contributed-to by its having been long ago, a junction between the standard-gauge main line, and an extensive metre-gauge system -- this one, the French equivalent of a "private" railway -- operated in its latter years by the Voies Ferrees d'Interet Local, criss-crossing much of the western parts of the Pas-de-Calais departement, and at Rang du Fliers coming in from the east, intersecting with the s/g main, and then continuing westward for some kilometres to terminate at Berck-Plage. The metre gauge was abandoned at, I believe, the beginning of 1955; but with railway administrations, past associations can sometimes linger long.

 

[Gloster]

I suppose it's too fanciful to perceive Rang du Fliers's being a point of some significance, at some level in the minds of those who run France's railways (hence the phenomena discussed in this thread): as contributed-to by its having been long ago, a junction between the standard-gauge main line, and an extensive metre-gauge system -- this one, the French equivalent of a "private" railway -- operated in its latter years by the Voies Ferrees d'Interet Local, criss-crossing much of the western parts of the Pas-de-Calais departement, and at Rang du Fliers coming in from the east, intersecting with the s/g main, and then continuing westward for some kilometres to terminate at Berck-Plage. The metre gauge was abandoned at, I believe, the beginning of 1955; but with railway administrations, past associations can sometimes linger long.

No, I am afraid not. Regional politics and power bases are still important in France, far more so than in the UK.

 

[Calthrop]

I'm sure you're right -- just, my railway enthusiasm is of such a kind that seeing the name Rang du Fliers immediately and powerfully calls to mind for me, its standard / metre gauge interface connotations as of pretty-well a lifetime ago. In George Behrend's Railway Holiday In France (publ. 1963) this station name occasions an almost-splendidly awful pun: recounting his Paris -- Calais run at the end of his tour by rail of a large slice of France, the author makes a remark to the effect that when passing on the main line through Rang Du Fliers, there is no longer any chance of spotting there, the metre-gauge "fliers"; the m/g line having closed some years previously.