Marseilles (AFP)

From Marseille, the Côte Bleue train winds its way back up the cliff above the Mediterranean.

Built largely thanks to immigrant workers, this century-old line is brought back to life thanks to acrobatic works.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this train will serve the stations of Estaque, Niolon, Ensuès-la-Redonne ..." Since the end of April, after eight months of stoppage for work, the voice of the SNCF agent once again echoes the names of these seaside villages which inspired the painters Cézanne, Braque or Derain, the writer Blaise Cendrars or the filmmakers Jean Renoir, Marcel Pagnol and Robert Guédiguian.

The blue and white regional express train leaves Marseille, leaving behind the bars of buildings, traffic jams and containers in the port of France's second largest city.

He then enters a wild landscape, between the Nerthe massif and the sea.

"The alternation between tunnels, the Mediterranean, villages in coves, it's magic", marvels Benoît Larcher, beekeeper based in Hamburg (northern Germany), who decided with his German partner, Wiebke Doscher, to visit the west coast of Marseille without taking the car.

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"What touches me the most are the contrasts of lights and colors, between the limestone whites at the start of L'Estaque then the ochres at Ensuès-la-Redonne and this blue (...) of the sea and the sky ", says Eric Barron, an SNCF executive who has been training the drivers of this 32-kilometer line between Marseille and Miramas for years.

This railway worker, who, as a teenager, hiked along the tracks on the customs path, also founded the association La Voix de la Côte Bleue, to defend this line carrying between 1,300 and 1,500 passengers every day.

62% are tourists, the others make their home-work trips, the line also serving more industrial areas to Fos-sur-Mer.

In about a century, France, which had one of the densest rail networks in Europe in the 1930s, has seen around 20,000 kilometers of lines being closed to passenger service, according to geographer Etienne Auphan.

- "Xenophobia" and acrobatics -

If nothing was done, the line of the Blue Coast risked a permanent closure in 2023, recalled the president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, Renaud Muselier.

But this mythical line built between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century was finally saved by the renewed interest in rail, in a period of ecological transition, and by its rich architectural heritage.

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23 tunnels, 18 viaducts: between rock and sea, the site was titanic.

Scree, scaffolding or stone falls, many workers lost their lives, recalls the historian Louis Roubaud in his book "The railroad from the Blue Coast to the plains of Crau".

The builders had massive recourse to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Kabyle immigrants from Algeria, who were victims of "traditional xenophobia", recalls the historian.

In his film Toni (1935), which evokes the harsh condition of immigrants in France, Jean Renoir filmed an emblematic scene on this way of the Blue Coast, on the impressive steel viaduct of Caronte, in Martigues.

Completed in 1915, the line includes "masterpieces of stone" such as the Eaux salées viaduct, which connects two wild hills thanks to a unique, semicircular arch of 50 meters, designed by Paul Séjourné, designer engineer of the gigantic Adolphe bridge in Luxembourg.

"It is very important to promote this exceptional heritage, but without forgetting the hard work of those who built the line", insists Eric Barron.

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Some 105 years later, SNCF Réseau renewed 24 kilometers of track, partly with recycled materials, and secured viaducts and walls.

Acrobatic work.

"The supply and evacuation of materials were carried out by helicopter hoisting and the work on the rocky slopes carried out in + mountaineer mode", tells AFP Cécile Triolle, project director.

More than 46 million euros have been invested, the majority by the Region (19 million euros) and SNCF Réseau (14.4 million).

A second phase is planned for 2026-2027 with a total planned investment of 157 million euros by 2032.

"Beyond the picturesque and touristy, this line is an extraordinary asset for reducing the carbon footprint" of the inhabitants of the Marseille metropolis, believes Henri Cambacedes, first deputy of Martigues, who pleads for even more trains during the day.

© 2021 AFP