Felletin - last throws? ... lessons??

[whole diary]

[grahame]

https://railwayworld.net/2025/03/28/death-of-a-french-branch-line/

Having a morning to walk around charming Felletin, I paid a visit to the tourist office and was shocked to discover that the lady there could not tell me anything about train times and seemed to have no knowledge of the impending closure. Similarly at the station itself, now restored as a community cafe, there was no indication whatever that the end was nigh for rail services to the town.

Picking up on Gareth David's article ... I took the opportunity to visit Felletin today while there's still a chance - I have written at https://grahamellis.uk/blog1647.html

[grahame]

Some more pictures - this time from Limoges to Felletin for the more rail folks

[Mark A]

A detail from that article, the train that overnights at the terminus with the crew having a permanently-booked room at the nearby hotel.

Mark

[stuving]

There's a lot of grumbling from rural France about the loss of local shops and services - medical in particular. But it's patchy; I think having a large town offering competition nearby is a big factor. Of course not having one means there aren't many jobs. On the whole, though, small towns in France do still have most of standard features you expect - including a restaurant doing proper meals - but it can be hard to see how they survive.

The Atlantic coast is a bit different. I've never made it all the way to Le Croisic, largely because there's not much there. It's a long coast, with similar little places all along that are doing fairly well. In some ways they are supported by all the holiday second homes, as well as local trippers and people working inland. The big towns and cities nearby help with the last two. Of course Le Croisic has the added feature that the trains serving St Nazaire and the built-up coast west of it (including La Baule, which is rather posh) need to stop somewhere before its wheels get too wet.

Second homes don't always have a positive effect, of course. But in France they are owned by people much further down the income scale, and in larger numbers, than here (3.7 million vs 0.7). They were built in large numbers from the 70s, when buyers wanted small new apartments rather than primitive old one to do up. More recently builders have even offered new-build tiny fisherman's cottages! So they don't compete to occupy the locals' housing, and are often let much of the year via local agents so they also supply further holiday visitors. The problems have been more with overdevelopment and building in the wrong places.

The countryside does have a holiday market, and gîtes, but it's mostly diffuse and only a few honeypot locations can do what the coast does to support businesses.

[Richard Fairhurst]

An angry blog posting from January about successive line closures in this part of France:

https://raildusud.canalblog.com/2025/01/busseau-sur-creuse-felletin-etat-et-region-prets-a-enterrer-l-un-des-derniers-vestiges-des-radiales-nord-sud-du-massif-central.html

The commenters are rather sceptical about disused railway trackbeds and structures being repurposed as voie vertes (greenways). But far rather that than ploughed up and forgotten, as happened to most of our Beeching-era closures. (There's a Facebook group chronicling the absolute destruction of the Great Central which just makes me weep.)

When I cycled through France in May I was astonished at the rate of voie verte construction - at both Cahors on the Lot, and on the Via Ardeche near to Vallon-Pont d'Arc, there were brand new routes that hadn't even been mapped on OpenStreetMap yet. (Pics attached.) It seems to be generally accepted that the rest of the Lot valley line will become a greenway, after the community rail endeavour finally gave up any hope of raising the inflated sums SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) were demanding to put the railway back in good order. A tourist region like the Lot really ought to have good quality public transport, of course. But maybe little Felletin could get a voie verte.

[grahame]

There's a lot of grumbling from rural France about the loss of local shops and services - medical in particular ....

Indeed - I noted an empty hospital / medical facility in Felletin and much else that I wonder how it survives.  Mentioning the old line that used to go onwards to Ussel ... I noted a bus stop at the top of Station Road, in traditional British style without any indication of what celled there ... but on my walk back though the town past the bus stop there was a coach just leaving - pretty well empty - toward that destination.    The town was - infested - with cars looking for the most central possible parking spaces and making it hard to photograph without someone's darned private vehicle making the view far less special.

I am lost for words at the loss of service and the loss of opportunity for the community.  The service is effectively gone already - 2 trains a day (as we know from experience) does nothing; I don't know the whole economic and public sentiment background here and potential markets to understand and could not from a single visit. It's my understanding that it can / could be done and indeed "our' Lee had been very much involved with that in Brittany with what I believe is some success.

The return train DID^▸ (Didcot Parkway) fill somewhat on its return - just 14 passenger legs (3 humans, one with 2 dogs) from Felletin but picked up at places along the way, some very much larger ... and of course being just a single carriage it can feel busy without really being mass transit.

There are other lines radiating from Limoges - trying a bit more today.  Some such as the line to Poitiers seem to only run part way - to Le Dorat - on my timetable planner and are then buses-pretending-to-be-trains and finding an up to date map of what is really trains is tricky.  Some may be being (re)built and with justified rail replacement - massive  work going on at Limoges station itself.  Other services so thin that they are virtually unmarketable because of it, or only fit for narrow traffic requirements not the general traffic of the area.

[grahame]

... But maybe little Felletin could get a voie verte.

As your describe, though, it's just a small part of a vey big subject over a massive region.  The line is indeed lovely - as are a number of others.  The other two who were with me on the train into Felletin were fit looking gentlemen - one with a walking pole and I suspect he we off to explore the countryside routes.

The soli is sandy and the grass brown around Felletin - but still it's notable how much overgrown it has been allowed to become since pictures taken less than a year ago.  It's much greener up the valley, and indeed the tree hit a branch which to entangled in the mechanism, and the driver and her train manager got doen trackside to pull it out.   I wonder in these green parts how much the greenway will be kept clear of encroaching growth.  Temperatures fell tropical.

[rogerpatenall]

These damn trees go much too fast . . .

[stuving]

France has a lot of rural lines that were built too late to have ever been worth it. In this case the line from Guéret to Ahun was built quite early, in the 1860s, to serve mines (long since closed). The next section was agreed just before and caught up in the Plan Freycinet of 1879, which led to the government trying to fill in all the gaps in the network. Ussel was a sub-prefecture of the Creuze, and all of those were seen to deserve a railway. Note that's more a matter of political dignity than economic need. However, implementing the plan took so long that the parts to Felletin and on to Ussel were opened in 1882 and 1905.

By the latter date road vehicles had already appeared, and soon would take over local goods and passenger transport on level ground, though here in the mountains that happened from the 1920s. In fact, Ussel got another railways (of sorts) even later, onward to the prefecture at Tulle. This was the Transcorrézien, a narrow-gauge steam tramway, which only lasted until the 1950s. Part of the Felletin-Ussel line closed in the 1980s when a tunnel was found to be unsafe, at which date there was still significant goods traffic. That's now gone ...