La Mure (France) (AFP)
The little tourist train from La Mure (Isère), which winds on a narrow-gauge line opened in 1888, once again welcomed travelers on Wednesday after 11 years of closure.
After three years of work, a shortened version of the historic route allows travelers to connect the Matheysine plateau, where the coal mines at the origin of the creation of the train were located, and the Montenard lake, an area of turquoise blue water stuck in the middle of the mountains.
The line inaugurated at the end of the 19th century allowed local coal to be transported to the national rail network, 600 meters below, in the Grenoble valley.
In 1903, a portion of the line was electrified with high voltage direct current, a world first.
The line opened to the public on Wednesday, several weeks late, works with the same electrical system and a newly renovated 1933 locomotive.
"It's a moment of emotion" for Marc Guillot, president of the association managing Mine Image, a museum of local mining history.
"I was a child who lived in the neighborhood and this train punctuated our daily life," he recalls, sitting in one of the wagons of the first route open to visitors.
“There were 17 (daily) rotations at the peak of mining activity,” he recalls.
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Anthracite mining was stopped definitively in 1997, but train traffic continued for tourists until a landslide in 2010.
Shortly after leaving the completely renovated La Mure station, you can see the buildings of the last working shaft with its headframe, a high metallic structure characteristic of coal mining.
The red tortillard, whose top speed does not exceed 30 km / h, finds its terminus above the Drac valley in 40 minutes and allows visitors to access a belvedere which overlooks the EDF dam and the artificial lake. du Monteynard-Avignonet, popular with sailing enthusiasts.
"This tourist equipment will make it possible to participate in the attractiveness of this beautiful region", declared in a press release Jean-Pierre Barbier, the president (LR) of the department of Isère, main financier of the renovation to the tune of about thirty millions of euros.
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The department has entrusted the operation of the line, which before 2010 transported around 70,000 travelers per year, to the company Edeis, whose main activity is the management of regional airports.
© 2021 AFP