The pine-cone express: century of railroad history in southern France

By Bernd F. Meier Jul 26, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Digne-les-Bains, France - The large clock at the Digne-les-Bains railroad station stopped running a long time ago. Just how long it has been since it stopped ticking, nobody knows for sure.

And it is appropriate since it is here that a trip into the past begins, to Europe's largest ammonite field near Digne.

Visitors arrive from around the world in order to see a find from early geological history - the 350 square metre ammonite slab, containing some 1,500 petrified remains of crustaceans going back more than 200 million years.

'Twenty-seven years ago these early-historical traces were discovered by chance during road construction work,' notes Helene Vignot of the Digne Tourism Office.

In the meantime, part of the High Provence region has been declared a geological park, while in the 'Mussee Promenade' in Digne the early geological history is illustrated for visitors.

With a penetratingly insistent honking of its horn, the blue-coloured rail-bus leaves the train station. The rail-bus can reach speeds of up to 75 kilometres per hour on the narrow-gauge tracks.

Then comes the first stop, somewhere in the middle of a pine forest, at a small rail hut resembling a bus stop. Altogether there are 50 stops along the single-track route.

Starting at Digne, at an elevation of 600 metres, the rails wind their way along the so-called 'Route Napoleon' - National Road 85 - and through a wilderness valley of the Verdon River to the Thorame-Haute railway station.

It goes over 16 stone bridges, 15 ironwork viaducts and through 25 tunnels. The longest, near Thorame-Haute, is 3.4 kilometres long. It also marks, at an elevation of 1,022 metres above sea level, the highest point along the route.

Especially the stretch between Digne and Thorame-Haute is considered to be a masterpiece of engineering with its numerous bridges, dams and tunnels.

A technological achievement is the loop at le Fugeret, where the rails loop back around along a mountain slope, making a more than 180-degree turn along the way.

Work to build the rail line took more than 20 years before the first trains could steam their way between Digne and Nice starting in 1911.

Back then, the journey rumbled along for five hours. According to the accounts, instead of coal, the steam locomotives were fired by pine cones, and so the train eventually got the nickname 'Train des Pignes' - the pine cone train.

Despite the rusting turning platform the rail route is far from being put out to pasture. Commuters, school children and students still use the pine-cone train. Railway fans come from all around the ride it. Each year some 500,000 passengers climb on board and the numbers are rising.

At the Entrevaus train station dozens of travellers get on board who had already arrived on an early-morning train from Nice just to spend a few hours strolling through the town's narrow streets.

Atop a steep cliff there is a medieval castle, built by the master 17th-century fortress designer Marquis de Vauban. A few stops later, it is worth stopping to take in the quiet settings of the town Puget-Theniers.

From here to Nice it is only another 65 kilometres for the pine-cone express, chugging along the curving tracks of the gorge-like valley of the Var River. After a little more than three hours the peaceful trip ends in the busy Nice central train station Nice-CP in the Rue Alfred Binet.