Rail website (maps, logs, pictures, videos...) born on march 2, 2008, upgraded january 17, 2021
(HTML/CSS programmning by Laetitia Debesse, ENSTA Paris engineering school - many thanks to her !).
Author : Reinhard Douté (who am I ? see 2011 interview in french here).
August 2011, France, 2 volumes (line numbers 001-600 and 601-990 i.e. roughly France North and South)
Editions La Vie Du Rail(sales taken over by publishing company RD-RAIL mid-2019)
A century of progress described in 9 years (1914/33/50/63/78/88/98/2003/2014)
With english text
This book is the first of two on the "Rail performance in France" theme
Future publications (information updated july 6, 2025) :
(rough sketch only - for more information, see the french version of this text)
(1) Performance of rail operations in France (Volume 2) : 2024 update for travel times (including a reminder of 1998 / 2003 / 2014)
+ various thoughts, both theoretical and practical, on the performance level of railway operations in France nowadays
(with some foreign comparisons e.g. Germany)
Expected publication date : before summer 2026.
(2) Line profiles, extended and revised edition
Expected publication dates : 2027 - 2030
The next publications for line profiles will be both regional and complete over a given volume/territory :
in other words, each published volume will include, over its geographic coverage :
(1) an update of profiles published in 2011,
(2) the addition of all "secondary" profiles, not published in 2011 (~ freight-only or now closed lines).
The geographical division is expected to be as follows (but might still be concentrated further, in 4-6 volumes) :
Volume 1 : Est (Compagnie de l'Est + Alsace - Lorraine network)
Volume 2 : Nord
Volume 3 : Ouest (north of the Loire river)
Volume 4 : Southwest 1 (ex-Etat + PO)
Volume 5 : Southwest 2 (Compagnie du Midi)
Volume 6 : PLM 1 (from Paris to Lyon)
Volume 7 : PLM 2 (from Lyon to the Languedoc region and Italy)
Volume 8 : the Ile-de-France region
For consistency reasons, some marginal lines may appear in two volumes e.g. St-Sulpice > Toulouse, a PO line
in Midi territory, for Volumes 4 and 5, and Ile-de-France portions of main lines out of Paris will of course
appear in regional Volumes.
For data availability reasons, the very first publication will be Volume 5, scheduled early 2027. This will incorporate
all lines south and/or west of : Le Verdon - Bordeaux - Montauban - Castres - Rodez - Espalion - Neussargues - Millau -
Le Vigan - Lodève - Montpellier - Montbazin-Gigean - Sète.
(3) Historical and current index of french railways stations and lines
