Le Quiz d'Avent - jour 23, 21 Dec 2020

[whole diary]

[grahame]

I'm just waiting to find out number 8. I have a strange weakness for the 'grandiose brutalist' style of architecture!

Waiting for divine inspiration? Asked a friend? Or just a slow-moving memory, like mine?

We could add a poll to "Ask the Audience"

[stuving]

Here are a few (not too helpful at this early stage) hints:

2. taken in 2013
4. sauce for the Rosbif?
5. had to be rebuilt after 1945
7. you can only see two or three locks, but ?
12. rebuilt station opened last month
two, I know, are places a lot of people have driven through - or perhaps more likely past.
And these are all recent - no older than 2012 - so may have been mentioned on the forum.

3, as I said is a main line station - here's a picture to prove it (for those who are logged on and can see it):

[Hal]

Thello is a pretty big clue. Wikipedia tells me it runs trains from France into Italy, but with very limited number of station stops in France.
So for No.3 I'll guess Dijon-Ville.

[stuving]

Thello is a pretty big clue. Wikipedia tells me it runs trains from France into Italy, but with very limited number of station stops in France.
So for No.3 I'll guess Dijon-Ville.

I'm a bit puzzled by that suggestion - Dijon is very much open air, and this one is very much not.

[eightonedee]

Stuving - I think I can work out no 12 as well - is a waiver of the only one in the first day available?

[stuving]

Stuving - I think I can work out no 12 as well - is a waiver of the only one in the first day available?

Yes, this time I think so.

[stuving]

I think many have paused for a few deep breaths after the changes / events of the last few days ... many of might have guessed / speculated at some of the changes that might happen, but not at the detail nor the days they would happen.

I find it quite ironic, most prescient of Stuving, that all these places photographed are now in the Forbidden Zone!

You could think of this quiz as like using Zoom for a business meeting abroad, but for a holiday - and without those annoying heads blocking the view.

[eightonedee]

Thanks Stuving - 12 is (I think) Nantes station (the "TER Pays de Loire" on the train was the clue!)

[stuving]

Thanks Stuving - 12 is (I think) Nantes station (the "TER Pays de Loire" on the train was the clue!)

Yes - in 2018 it was getting its new "transfer deck" a la Reading, but called a mezzanine. And it was made of beams craned into place, hence the through tracks underneath being closed.

Stylistically, it's nothing like NR^» (Network Rail - home page) and Grimshaw's rather plain box.

Among the hits for "gare nantes video", this one has least distracting waffle. And I note that the unions are complaining about how much space is taken up by retail units ...

[JontyMort]

Here are a few (not too helpful at this early stage) hints:

2. taken in 2013
4. sauce for the Rosbif?
5. had to be rebuilt after 1945
7. you can only see two or three locks, but ?
12. rebuilt station opened last month
two, I know, are places a lot of people have driven through - or perhaps more likely past.
And these are all recent - no older than 2012 - so may have been mentioned on the forum.

3, as I said is a main line station - here's a picture to prove it (for those who are logged on and can see it):

A pedant writes: 3 is indeed an SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) mainline station, but it isn?t in France. Monaco.

[stuving]

A pedant writes: 3 is indeed an SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) mainline station, but it isn?t in France. Monaco.

That's right - though pedantically speaking it's Monaco-Monte-Carlo. Its marginal unFrenchness is covered by my carefully-worded let-out about some not meeting that definition. I can't think of any similar station in a tunnel, though some are underground (or under a station building).

It's said they rebuilt the line in tunnel to free up valuable land for building very expensive flats on (there being no other kind in Monaco). But hardly any of the line was open to the sky before that, so it must have been more a case of building blocks of flats with underground car parks (and swimming pools?) rather than without.

Most of the workers in Monaco live in Nice, and with tourists as well the railway link gets very busy. My mid-morning train from Nice was full and standing tidily only, and left half an hour late. By then the next train was due to leave, and on checking the SNCF online compensation system I found my train had been renumbered as that second train. So it was on time - and the earlier one was cancelled, but fortunately had no passengers! I wasn't impressed. The crowd pictured didn't all fit on the train when it arrived - and it was a 12-car of double-deckers. I trusted the CIS^▸ (Customer Information System) and got a more inhabitalble one ten minutes later.

This line has one of the worst performance records in France. SNCF have been having a long-running "difference of views" with the region (PACA), currently subject to a kind of truce.

That's all happening across France, but this is PACA* - and the region has been having a long bout of arm-wrestling with SNCF over the cost and performance of their services. They threatened an open competition, but in the end found a legal process that let them requisition SNCF in some way rather than negotiating a contract. I've no idea how that works, but after three years they have a new agreement.

[JontyMort]

A pedant writes: 3 is indeed an SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) mainline station, but it isn?t in France. Monaco.

That's right - though pedantically speaking it's Monaco-Monte-Carlo. Its marginal unFrenchness is covered by my carefully-worded let-out about some not meeting that definition. I can't think of any similar station in a tunnel, though some are underground (or under a station building).

It's said they rebuilt the line in tunnel to free up valuable land for building very expensive flats on (there being no other kind in Monaco). But hardly any of the line was open to the sky before that, so it must have been more a case of building blocks of flats with underground car parks (and swimming pools?) rather than without.

Most of the workers in Monaco live in Nice, and with tourists as well the railway link gets very busy. My mid-morning train from Nice was full and standing tidily only, and left half an hour late. By then the next train was due to leave, and on checking the SNCF online compensation system I found my train had been renumbered as that second train. So it was on time - and the earlier one was cancelled, but fortunately had no passengers! I wasn't impressed. The crowd pictured didn't all fit on the train when it arrived - and it was a 12-car of double-deckers. I trusted the CIS^▸ (Customer Information System) and got a more inhabitalble one ten minutes later.

This line has one of the worst performance records in France. SNCF have been having a long-running "difference of views" with the region (PACA), currently subject to a kind of truce.

That's all happening across France, but this is PACA* - and the region has been having a long bout of arm-wrestling with SNCF over the cost and performance of their services. They threatened an open competition, but in the end found a legal process that let them requisition SNCF in some way rather than negotiating a contract. I've no idea how that works, but after three years they have a new agreement.

We went on that line when we spent a long weekend in Menton a few years ago, flying to Nice. And very pleasant too. The views are lovely - except in Monaco.

The tunnel section was built in two stages, and certainly freed up some land. Wiki has an explanation and a map.

[grahame]

I have never ceased to be amazed at what a win world with so many countries we have. It's a richness which means that as soon as we leave these shores we're onto thin layers of knowledge (found it with Irish quizzes too!).     None of us (I hope!) has been to France in the last few days (though I know at least one member lives there rather just visiting so I pulled up a little map.  Click below if you want to see it bigger / remind yourself of the rail network there ...  which looks like it may help with some of the pictures - at least giving places to try.



Huge thanks to Stuving for hosting this quiz ... I'm sure more answers will come in / more clues and solutions by Christmas.

[grahame]

7

I'm darned sure I've seen something like that before..  But Google Image Search came up with Hunerford and a picture in an Estate Agent's house details showing the canal nearby, and Tineye reports

TinEye searched over 45.0 billion images but didn't find any matches.

This could be because:
Your image is unique. TinEye won't find personal photographs, artwork or other original images.

I am lost for choice between Normandy and Carcassone ... with a strong probability of being told that both are wrong.

Off to sleep ...

[infoman]

As we are in "French mode" I was watching the film The Greengage Summer with Kenneth Moore.

In one of the first scenes which I must have missed or it might have been removed
was 28 Boulevard de Verdun, B?ziers, H?rault, France in Southern France near Montpelier

Would any one know the village train station the family arrived at?
most of the location shots are in and around the reims and marne area.