Le Train Bleu (passenger train)

:"This article is about the French luxury passenger train. For the South African luxury passenger train of the same name, see Blue Train (South Africa)."

Le Train Bleu (lit. "the Blue Train") was a luxury French night express train which carried wealthy and famous passengers between Calais and the French Riviera from 1922 until 1938.

During its heyday, the Train Bleu inspired a ballet by the Ballets Russes and a mystery novel by Agatha Christie. It was nationalized in 1938 and made part of the SNCF State Railways; stopped running during World War II; and resumed after the war as an ordinary night sleeper express train to the South of France.

History

The Train Bleu was created by a private French railroad company, the Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée, or PLM, to take British aristocrats, celebrities and the wealthy to the French Riviera. Its official name was the Calais-Mediterranee Express, but it became known as the blue train because of its dark blue sleeping cars. It made its first journey on December 8, 1922.

The prime season for the Train Bleu was between November and April, when wealthy travellers escaped the British winter to spend their holiday on the Riviera. The Train Bleu originated at the Gare Maritime in Calais, where it picked up British passengers from the ferries across the English Channel. It departed at 1:00 in the afternoon and went to the Gare du Nord in Paris, then around Paris by the Grande Ceinture line to the Gare de Lyon, where it picked up additional passengers and coaches. It departed Paris early in the evening, and made stops at Dijon, Chalons, and Lyon, before reaching Marseille early in the morning. It then made stops at all the major resort towns of the Riviera, or Cote d'Azur: St. Raphael, Juan-les-Pins, Antibes, Cannes, Nice, Monaco, and its final destination, Menton, near the Italian border.

The Train Bleu was exclusively first-class, composed of steel sleeping cars operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, plus a dining car renowned for its haute cuisine five-course dinners. The sleeping cars were painted blue with gold trim, and each had only ten sleeping compartments, with one attendant assigned to each sleeping car. Early passengers included The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), Charlie Chaplin, designer Coco Chanel, Winston Churchill and writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh and Somerset Maugham.

The Great Depression and the devaluation of the British Pound greatly reduced the number of wealthy British and American vacationers going to the Riviera. In 1936, the new Popular Front Government in France introduced the paid two-week vacation for French workers. Second-class and third-class sleeping cars were added to the Train Bleu to carry middle and working class French people on holiday to the South of France. In 1938, the Popular Front Government nationalized the private railway companies in France, including PLM, the operators of the Train Bleu. After 1938 Le Train Bleu was run by the new French national railway company, the SNCF as an ordinary night express train.

Service was interrupted during World War II, but resumed again after the war, when the train officially took the name 'Le Train Bleu." Scheduled airline service began between Paris and Nice in 1945, which took away much of the wealthy clientele. After 1978, the train added cars with couchettes to attract more middle-class passengers.

Beginning in the 1980s the night express trains were gradually replaced by the high-speed TGV trains, which cut the length of the journey from Paris to Nice from twenty hours to five, and effectively ended the era of luxury night trains to the French Riviera.

Art and Literature Inspired by Le Train Bleu

In 1924 the Train Bleu inspired a ballet of the same name, created by Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, with a story by Jean Cocteau, costumes by Coco Chanel and a curtain painted by Pablo Picasso.

The train was featured in the novel "The Mystery of the Blue Train" (1928) by Agatha Christie, and the novel "Mon Ami Maigret" (1949) by Georges Simenon.

A French television series, Le train bleu s'arrete 13 fois (lit. The Blue Train Stops 13 times), appeared on the French channel ORTF between October 8 1965 and March 11, 1966. It featured one mystery episode for each of the thirteen stops of the Train Bleu between Paris and Menton, based on short stories by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.

In 1963, the belle-epoque restaurant at the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris was renamed "Le Train Bleu" to honor the historic train.

Bibliography

* Lamming, Clive. "LaRousse des trains et des chemins de fer", Paris 2007.
* Ring, Jim. "Riviera -The Rise and Rise of the Cote d'Azur." John Murray Publishers, London, 2006.

Articles from the French Wikipedia

* Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de Paris a Lyon et a la Mediterranee (PLM).
* Histoire des chemins de fer francais

* "Le train bleu s'arrete 13 fois"