'traction'? pics from France

[aartwmich]

Hi Folks..I'm back from a two week trip to France, to see my daughter and alot of the rest of the country.

I use the term 'traction' niavely, just what I've kinda picked up here at this forum, I really know little about it...you know those trains that are powered from the overhead wires and the hinged thingy on the engine that maintains contact along the wire??

Aaaanyway, these trains are ALL over France. You could spend two weeks just railfanning over there. Unfortunately my travelling companion could give a rip about trains but I did manage to stop to get a few pics of them. It's hard to take pics when you are driving 90mph, I mean 150kph....lol I will have some more later of the trams in the city of Montpellier, when the film gets developed as welll as some awesome bridges,they're all over the mountains there.

The following 4 pics were taken near Luzenac which is near the Pyrenees in southwest France

EDIT: I just realized how lame these shots are with the trees in the way and the guardrail :-( Sorry I couldn't do better....does the thought and effort count??

[aartwmich]

2 of 4

[aartwmich]

3 of 4

[aartwmich]

4 of 4

[interurban]

Well done aartwmich, Glad you are back safe AND with neat shots of Traction.
Thanks for posting, Did you get to ride the rails??

Yes thought and effort ARE the main ingredents:D ;) :p
ps I can see through trees.:)

[Topo]

Congratulations, aartwmich!
You have catched a nice BB-7200 in freight scheme ("Fret") :cool:
193 of these locomotives wore this livery, and they are based in South France

[spitfire]

Hey girl! Welcome back! Those are some very interesting shots you got there. Hope you had a good time in France and a nice visit with your daughter too.

cheers
Val

[Woodie]

Voulez vous le toot bon le Francais? :p :cool:

[RailRon]

Fine to have you back, aart. Aaah - Spring in southern France! Must have been wonderful holidays.

Those are fine action shots. And don't worry, there is a rule of pacing trains: For minutes you have a wonderful free view of the charging train. But whenever you take a shot at it, out of nowhere a tree or something else pops up and tries to cover up the train. :D

But here I think the trees add very much to the atmosphere of the pictures. Of course these are not pics for the rivet counters - but they show, what railroads are for, moving goods through a landscape. I'm looking forward to more of your pics!

And thank you, Topo, for the additional information. The BB's are my favorites among the French locos - love that bullish look with these drawn-in windshields. But I never saw that freight scheme before.

Ron

[aartwmich]

Thanks folks....I'm glad someone other than me got some enjoyment out of these pics. I REALLY wish I could have taken a day to just railfan. There were tracks, and tunnels and bridges EVERYWHERE, it was amazing. The shots near Luzenac were at a yard, I wanted to go across the road and maybe even into the yard but someone was in a hurry to drive over the Pyrenees thru Andorre and Hey Topo we had lunch in Spain! I was lucky to get to stop the car..lol

Anyway here 4 more shots.. a bridge shot thru the moving car window somewhere near the Pyrenees..and a couple of tram shots taken in Montpellier. The tram tracks in the city had some helacious S curves and there are portions of the streets filled with tracks that cars are NOT supposed to drive on..hehe I did this once late at night, luckily the trams don't run much at night! My daughter rides the trams when she can afford it, or when the men in the little blue coats are home eating dinner hehe, we rode them several times while there with her.

We rented a car in Paris and drove south to the mountains then east to Nice, so we didn't take any train rides other than the city tram.

Woody I speak no french at all except the niceties and ouais ouais ouais..yeah yeah yeah lol THAT was very frustrating at times!

ok I'll quit babbling and post the pics :D

[aartwmich]

2 of 4

[aartwmich]

3 of 4

[aartwmich]

4 of 4

[interurban]

Reminds when I did a couple of camps in Germany 1969 & 1971.
Daltmon I think the was City we visited had simler yellow trams. I have a slide or two of that.
We have the same type of viaduct in Stockport England I used to see Steam Engines cross that :( not any more.

All great shots. That last pic is a beaut of a shot.
Well done:D

[TerryR]

Looks like you had a really good time. I've been to most of the places you mentioned and wish I was back there. Did you enjoy those nice twisty roads through the Pyrenees?

Hmmm, there's no smiley for "jealous" :(

You didn't, by any chance, get a shot of that little station before/after the train got in the way did you?

Some of those pictures would go nicely in the International section...

[Drew1125]

Very nice work, aart!
I'm also very jealous of you getting to go to southern France!:p :D I spent some time in Europe, but never made it down there:(
I think your photos are fine...you've managed to include a lot of the surrounding scenery, (those mountains are beautiful!) that's great from a modeler's perspective!
Thanks for sharing those! :)

[sumpter250]

Aart,
Nice pics ! Sometimes we tend to concentrate on the immediate subject, and "take it out of context". It's nice to see the trains, and where they exist, in the same photo! :cool: :cool:
Pete

[Matthyro]

Thanks for the visit to France Ima. Real mountainous where you went. Years ago my daughter spent a year as oupere(not sure how to spell that) 100 miles south of Paris. The next year she did it again in Switzerland. Had a great time and many fond memories. She talked a lot about rail travel(Euro Pass) and the cog rails in the mountains.

[60103]

aart:
Nice shots. Did you get any pix of the trees? They have a weird way of trimming them -- cut back big branches and let the suckers grow up from them. (was only there in May).
Every train I rode on had a different way of collecting tickets. Once, they gave me two little tickets and a computer card. I asked what it was for and didn't quite understand the explanation. (My French is quite good when I speak, not so good when I listen :( ). I was supposed to put it in a box and cancel it; the ticket checkers took pity on a pair of tourists. They didn't give me a computer card on the trip back.

[aartwmich]

The trees

60103 YES! Those trees fascinated me, they are everywhere in the towns and cities. They are Sycamore trees which someone told me are very resilient to harsh city conditions. WHY they prune them like that is beyond me, I plan on researching that just out of a gardeners curiosity. Maybe when they ran out of grape vines to prune, they went after the sycamores? lol

[aartwmich]

Thanks for all the compliments, I'm really glad you enjoyed the pics!

Terry R..I DID enjoy driving those roads, tho I often was delegated navigator because of my buddy's supposed motion sickness <rollseyes> I just let him drink most the wine then I would designate myself driver....lol The train got in the way of the station..sorry

Sumpter, thanks..context IS a good thing.

Matthyro..I think it's aupair but I knew whatya meant ;) , was a big thing years ago. A great way for young folks to 'travel abroad'. My daughter got a job tutoring some young kids for awhile.

60103..I've done some research on the pruning technique. It's called pollarding and is much frowned upon these days. But waaayyy back when it was common practice, they pruned trees that were maybe between 10 and 20 years old and then each year harvested the small branches that grew out of the cuts and used them for kindling and weaving. Today it's looked upon as unhealthy for the trees, which I find funny cause there are tons of these pollarded trees that are hunderds of years old and still going..so who knows

OK enough babbling---I have a few more pics of the urban trolley traction in Montpellier, these were shot with a standard point and shoot camera then scanned and edited digitally for brightness and contrast to show the primary sbject and resized to fit this forums size requirements

If anyone wants full sized files I can email them.

1 of 3

[aartwmich]

2 of 3

I cropped and lightened the last shot to show the street better.

[aartwmich]

3 of 3

Here is a closeup of the tracks in the street