Fete de La Vapeur at the Baie Du Somme 2006

Visiting the Chemin de Fer du Baie du Somme: Fete De La Vapeur 2006.

We watched our train being propelled towards us over the ungated level crossing, There were no warning lights and impatient drivers wove around the oncoming train. On the end balcony the guard blew his whistle and waved his flag, but no-one took any notice, least of all the train crew. In Britain the police and the railway inspectorate would have been very interested, but we were in France and they do things differently there.
I first visited the Baie Du Somme with my parents over thirty years ago. In those days the railway was in a similar sort of state to the Talyllyn in the early fifties, and it wasn’t very impressive to a teenager. The track and carriages were falling to pieces, the little 0-4-0 tank spent an age and a half in the middle of nowhere and arrived over an hour late. I didn’t have the opportunity to go back for over twenty years, and then found that things were very different. I told other volunteers about the railway one winter’s night in the Miner’s Standard at Winster. We were totally fed up with the rain and the cold and the idea of a spring break seemed very attractive. I managed to find a timetable by searching the Web for “chemin fer baie somme”, the expedition began to take definite shape and the last weekend in April was chosen for the date
The Chemin de Fer du Baie de Somme is a remnant of the network of metre gauge railways which used to criss-cross rural France and is operated by a large and well equipped preservation group . It runs round the mouth of the Somme estuary, with its main base at St Valery. From there, one line runs to Le Crotoy, via a junction with the SNCF at Noyelles and another runs out to Cayeux. The St Valery–Noyelles section is mixed standard and metre gauge, with some beautifully intricate turnouts.
Seven of us went on this trip. Vince Kay travelled down with my wife and myself, Dave Ives joined us at Dover. Colin and Jane Fearnley brought Andy Lynch, and hoped to meet us in St Valery by Saturday lunchtime.
The BBC had forecast appalling weather in Northern France, but the heavy rain failed to show up, though we saw plenty of evidence of flood problems.
There are two ways of getting to St Valery from Calais. You can speed down the motorway in about an hour and a half, or take a leisurely spin down the coast, which was the route we took. This leads past the German fortifications around the old radar station, and you can still see the bomb craters left by the RAF all about them. Further along, there is the massive blockhouse at Cap Griz Nez, where the Nazis built a fixed battery to try and dominate the straits of Dover. The huge concrete blockhouse is now a museum, including a rail mounted 12” naval gun, an absolutely massive piece of kit. If you have the time, it is a lot more entertaining than the motorway. Further down, there is old fortified town of Montreuil and the battlefield of Crecy, both of which are worth a visit. There is a monument at the site where Edward I directed the battle, and the truly obsessive gricer can search for the site of the station of Crecy en Ponthieu, which still exists as a private house. This marks the Northern limit of the original Reseau Somme, reached by a metre gauge branch from Noyelles.
Another place to look for on the way down is the Abbaye de Valloire, still a “working” abbey and school. It is a wonderful place to stay overnight, and even I enjoyed visiting the gardens.
We slipped out of Calais on the coast road and by early Friday evening we had booked into our hotel, the Auberge du Chateau de Nolette, a very quiet little French country hotel on the outskirts of Noyelles.
That night we drove into St Valery to explore. St Valery is a fishing port and it seems that the business of one half of the town is to catch and cook fish, and that of the other half is to eat it. We settled on the Drakkar restaurant and were served a magnificent meal for the price of a pub meal in England. On the way in I saw signposts for a bird reserve, and something called the “Maison des Huitres” – the House of the Oysters. It made me think of the Far Twittering & Oyster Perch Lt Rly as invented by Roland Emmett, and the resemblance did not entirely end there. Vince was delighted with the abundant birdlife in the area, he was an expert on bird recognition and clocked up over forty species in the course of the weekend.
On the Saturday morning we thought there might be no trains at all. A convoy of Dutch mobile flood pumps were preparing to pump out the Some canal to relieve the flooding and a large trench had been dug across the trackbed, perhaps fifteen feet wide and six feet deep. I made anxious enquiries at the station and was told that, certainement, the train would run.
There were no trains timetabled in the morning so we set off to explore. A little outside St Valery on the Cayeux road is the remains of a dump of steam locomotives and goods stock left by the German Army, who had used them for fortification work.
Back at St Valery we were able to wander round the workshops and found a green 2-6-0T, No. 15 raising steam ready for the first train. The crew were in the mess room with a long loaf and red wine. At this time the CFBS were carrying out very heavy sleeper replacements and there were several stacks of new sleepers in the works yard. My wife saw me drooling with envy over these and in that moment I was christened the “Sleepermonster”.
St Valery has three railway stations. The works is at St Valery-Canal, trains for Cayeux leave from St Valery-Ville, but trains for Noyelles leave from the Quayside, which has a separate branch. The was no sign of Andy Lynch or the Fearnleys, so we went without them. The first part of the journey would certainly open a few eyes in this country: across an ungated level crossing on the main road, through the station car park, and then a sharp curve to the left, back across the main road again (half barriers this time), then over a swing bridge across the canal, which was shared with a single track road and a footpath, then on to the mixed gauge in the depot yard, with not a signal or a facing point lock in sight.
The train was made up of traditional French metre gauge coaches with match boarded sides and wrought iron end balconies, from which we had an alarmingly clear view of the improvised bridge over the recently dug trench. A pair of electrification masts had been laid side by side, propped up on sleepers and with the original track panel plonked on top. In between trains it continued to serve as a public footpath – no footboards, no handrails. A French railway volunteer watched the bridge carefully from below to make sure there were no signs of settlement as our train made the maiden trip.
At this point the line runs close to the main road into St Valery and we spotted a familiar Landrover being driven in the opposite direction.
Eventually we met up with the others back at the Auberge and decided to eat in. Once again the meal was magnificent and Vince discovered Muscadet white wine; he had previously suspected all wine of giving an instant blinding headache, but found that this variety was quite harmless and went very well with fish.
In the morning we settled our plans over a traditional French breakfast, with mounds of fresh bread and croissants and huge jugs of coffee. My wife elected to explore the large Sunday market at St Valery and the seaside while the rest of us took the train to Le Crotoy. We would meet on the quayside at lunchtime and all take the train to Cayeux.
Once more our train ran out over the improvised bridge. At Noyelles there is a reversing junction and we passed another train coming in from Le Crotoy. The second locomotive was a curious 0-6-2T “Beton-Bazoches” with large windows in the back of the cab and no front sheet at all. It was intended always to run bunker first. The engines swapped trains briskly, again without any form of signalling, and set off almost together. The island platform between them feels as it is only around three feet wide. The two lines run parallel for some distance and a spirited race often takes place here. The first train out drifts up the yard, and waits for the other to catch up. As soon as they enter the racing straight, both regulators are opened up and the trains gallop together until the lines diverge.
The run to Cayeux was diesel hauled, using a diesel engine converted from steam, which was quite a common practice on French minor railways. Cayeux is a faded little resort that once called itself Brighton Plage in an effort to be fashionable. This is still embossed on the station wall. This part of the line has several open level crossings, and these are operated by of a man with a flag, and a fast car. He would hold up the traffic and wave us through, and then make a racing start to beat the train to the next crossing.
On our last night we went to a small and rather scruffy looking bar on the Rue de la Gare at Noyelles. Through the bar was a large, beautifully laid out dining room with a blazing log fire. The meals came with the biggest communal mountain of frites you ever saw ‘just ask if you want any more!’
We drove back on the Monday, pausing to shop at Calais. It was an excellent and very different weekend away. When we got back I showed photographs of the elaborate mixed gauge turnouts to Mick Thomas; we had just begun building a narrow gauge railway as an attraction at Rowsley and I suggested we should now go mixed gauge ourselves. This was not well received and the only printable word in his reply was “horrible”.
We have been back on a number of occasions, but our largest and best expedition was at the time of the 2006 Fete de la Vapeur which is staged every three years. There were about seventeen in our party, and between us we rented two flats in a house on the quayside and a house in the upper town, for a week ending with the gala weekend of the Fete. Sadly Vince was not among us, having died during treatment for cancer in 2003. We called ourselves “Vince’s Volunteers” in his memory.
My wife and I arrived first and collected the key to the lower flat, pretty shortly we were joined by Mike Fairburn and his partner Suzi, and we were just settling in and stocking the fridge with beer when Steve Ryszka turned up to beg a cup of coffee; he and his family were in the flat upstairs. I’d told Steve about the scrapyard some time before and he’d already been to look for it.
“I found the scrapyard but it wasn’t where you said and there were no steam locos in it”
Mike pricked up his ears.
“Scrapyard? Steam locomotives?”
After a very rapid cup of coffee we all went out to look for it, up past the supermarket on the road to Cayeux. There they were, beside the railway. The hulks and remains of four locomotives, plus the skeletons of various wagons, as dumped by the wehrmacht in 1944. The frames and/or boilers were cut through to stop them ever being used again. They have been rusting and rotting into the undergrowth ever since. Mike and Steve explored, and Mike was looking at one of the wrecks with a gleam in his eye.
“You know Tim, this one is quite do-able. I wonder who owns it; do you think he’d sell?” Oh crumbs, the boiler was cut through and there was a mature tree growing out of the cylinder block. Mike already had the little matter of an S160 to attend to, and other locomotives. On the other hand Mike does have MiMechE after his name and was trained by Hunslets.
“On an engine this old you’d probably have to replace the boiler anyway, and they’ve left the frames alone. Steve, where is that scrapyard you found?”
As it happens, the yard was about half a mile away, and when we got there it looked as if it belonged to the sort of chap who would hang on to a few steam engines for sixty years or so. Over the fence we could see the remains of anti-tank obstacles welded up from girders, presumably dragged off the beaches, and by the gate was a pair of artillery wheels with the eagle and swastika cast into them. There was also a pile of shell casings in the garden of the cottage next door, and the barrel of a small field gun lying in the grass on the opposite side of the lane.
Mike felt this was very promising. “Tim, how’s your French – good enough to say please may I buy your engine and how much?” As it happens, it is.
“Perfect.” Mike was rubbing his hands. ”We’ll come back at a civilised time during the week and try and do a little business. Tim, you do realise that if anything comes of this, it will all be your fault.”
I thought about that on the way back. I like Suzi, but I wondered what she would think; it wouldn’t be the first time I got the blame for leading someone astray in my adventures. As it happened she took it very well. Her view was that Mike should buy a disused country station somewhere so that he could fix his engines at home and not have to travel about so much. As the evening wore on and the level in the wine bottles went down we expanded on the theme; if Mike could get hold of the engine and fix it we could bring it to France on holiday. Alastair Gregory who was also present mentioned he had a contact with the Irchester Narrow gauge railway museum who have a working metre gauge Peckett 0-6-0ST. If we could borrow that and get some sort of EU grant........it was a very good evening.
Next morning we went off to explore the sheds at St Valery Canal. The CFBS has a very civilised access policy, and provided you don’t try and actually watch the welding you are very welcome. They seem to fit new boilers and new coach bodies for example, on a regular basis and if I give the impression that some of their operating practices are not exactly anglo-saxon, their engineering is first rate. Although the railway was operating normally, the guest engines were starting to arrive and were undergoing trials ready for the next weekend, so it was a like having a private gala all to ourselves. The star of the show was a Portugese 0-4-4-0T Mallet normally based in Switzerland, which double heading a smart red 0-6-0T formerly of the Chemin de Fer du Cotes Nord. They were hauling a set of ex-Reseau Somme bogie coaches, which are varnished teak with wrought iron balconies. Later the Mallet was seen running around with a smart pair of Swiss bogie coaches which had just been purchased.
It was at this point that we saw an interesting confrontation at the swing bridge. This carries a single track road as well as the railway, and a light engine was confronted by a minibus going the other way, like two cats on a fence and about forty feet apart. At first the minibus stood its ground, at which the engine whistled. The minibus driver sounded his horn and made gestures. The engine driver opened first the drain cocks, then the regulator, at which the minibus reversed in a hurry. Nearby is a large sign which roughly translated says, “Trains cross here - SO THERE”.
Colin Fearnley went out to try his new video camera, and had a wonderful time, lots of engines whizzing about and very few other photographers to get in the way. He managed to get the Ultimate Master Shot at Noyelles, a head on view of two trains at full speed on the racing section, with no other photographers about, taken with a telephoto lens from the safety of the vee between the two lines.
We spent the weekend pottering about on the trains, but early the next week we were back at the scrapyard. The owner was in his eighties and I made Mike’s introductions. The reception was polite and friendly, but the locomotive would only be sold to the CFBS who had first refusal. I admired his collection and got a fascinating response. The gun barrel had been salvaged in 1944 and had been used by the germans to fire their last shells at the town as they retreated; one of them landed a few yards away down the lane. The previous day we had hired some bicycles from a shop near the church and gone on a tour. In one of the villages we had come across about a dozen British war graves, soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, killed in late June 1940, mostly “known unto God”.
“I remember them. They were in little tanks (bren carriers?) and killed by a plane. They were terribly burnt”. Hence the lack of identification; from the unit and date they were part of the 51st Highland division which after Dunkirk, made a forlorn attempt to hold the line of the Somme with the remains of the French armies. They were driven back to the other St Valery, St Valery en Caux, caught with their backs to the cliffs and forced to surrender; no evacuation for them.
Monsieur broke in on my thoughts. Would we like to see his collection? We had been admiring some of it before he came out to see us. By standing on the old gun, we could just see into the window of a large store shed across the way. It looked as if every time he came across something interesting it went in there. He opened up and we trooped in. I should say the shed was about thirty feet by forty, and it was filled from floor to ceiling with the most incredible collection of junk you ever saw in your life. Old vending machines, tinplate trains (1950’s and not very collectable in case you are wondering), charcoal irons, rifle mechanisms, enamel signs, old tools, in chaotic heaps six feet high, with footpaths about one foot wide between them. Right at the back were two old pre 1914 cars, complete but unrestored. We were assured that the oldest one still worked.
There are other things to do in Picardy apart from chasing trains and we spent a few days exploring the Somme Battlefields, Amiens and Abbeville. It was like being back at university, with friends calling for coffee and a chat at all hours, and those few days were one of the most relaxing holidays I’ve ever had. Towards the end of the week, the tempo around St Valery began to speed up, various guest engines and stock began to arrive, including a P class from the Kent and East Sussex Railway, plus a four wheel coach to operate on the mixed gauge section. The problem with that was that the mixed gauge section was not operable to the Quayside and did not run into St Valery Ville. This was solved by closing the main road and building a temporary platform on the level crossing in the middle of the highway. Other arrivals included a horse drawn tram and a rail mounted jeep.
Suddenly there were hordes of British cars about, we were glad we had dug in early. I went out to buy bread on the Saturday morning and saw a patrol of four obvious Brits advancing down the main street, two on each side, cameras at the ready. “Good morning chaps, which railway are you from?”
“Welshpool and Llanfair”
The principal centre for the Fete de la Vapeur was the junction at Noyelles, especially when the stem specials came in. Usually there are at least two or three in the course of these weekends. SNCF seemed to accept that there would be large crowds wandering over their main line as a matter of course, and all trains slowed down to about ten mph so that everyone had time to get out of the way. Photographers crowded into the four foot to get that perfect head on shot as the steam specials inched into the platform, before they wandered up the main line to examine the trains in the stabling sidings.
Over on the narrow gauge, as many as three trains were marshalled ready to depart with the flood of passengers from the specials, one for Le Crotoy, one for St Valery, and one for Cayeux. Each one had to carve a path through the crowd, while various peculiar machines shuttled up and down the sidings. I spent a long time just sitting on the ballast loading dock, watching the crowds and the action. The replica Marc Seguin 0-4-0 of 1930 is a regular visitor; this was a rival to Stephenson’s Rocket. It had a multi-tubular boiler, but no blastpipe, so the fire has to be blown by huge bellows mounted on the tender. There were several sales and society stalls at Noyelles, a model railway exhibition at St Valery, and various lesser exhibitions at Cayeux and le Crotoy.
We took a run up to Cayeux; somewhere we could hear a diesel. “Don’t look now, I think we’re being followed”. A diesel shunter was bucketing along a few hundred yards behind us, on its way to take up station pilot duties at Cayeux. This must have provided an extra challenge to the one man crossings crew. In fact the idea of “one train in section” seemed to have been generally abandoned. I was on one train which actually got overtaken, when it stopped at St Valery canal, and the P class crept up from behind, sneaked past it on the goods loop and pottered off up the quayside branch out of the way.
We left with some reluctance late on the Monday morning after the Fete. It really had been a very good break. We are counting the weeks to the next one this April.

Tim

 

We visited the railway about 5 or 6 years ago, when we were camping near st valery, Im looking at postcards as I type from the railway now!
One memory sticks in my mind was when we were at the station with the connection to the main line. We were waiting to depart back to st valery when a mainline electric rolled in.. As we departed so did the electric and we had a battle of the whistles which was quite fun I remember at the time...
Anyways excellent railway to visit thanks for sharing the memories.

 

A small but important correction to the opening Item, I am not a MiMechE, my technical qualification is Higher National Certificate.

The locomotives extant near St Valerie are a remarkable testment to the turbulent times that bought them to where they now rest. Two have copper fireboxes one of which is in remarkably good condition, though showing some strange construction features. I am a little apprehensive about what will be there this year, they have clearly been slowly denuded of parts over a period. They are what is probably a painfull reminder of the past, having been requisitioned by the Germans, and bought to the French coast where, one day in 1944, the Germans found out that the work that they were doing was in the wrong place. I would very much like to see one or more of these locomotives survive either as a museum exhibit 'as is' or restored to operational condition, but I have too many other commitments to do other than support any effort that was practical.

 

Tim

Thanks as ever for the inspirational account. As a result of your posting we decided to visit France last weekend and see if there were any goings on the offchance at the CFBS. There weren't.

However, we did have a good day out - took the motorway down and the coast road back. There is also a small 600cm line at Parc Bagatelle which runs along the main road for a couple of hundred metres before diving back into the theme park. This was also shut.

We'll be there for the 25/26th April weekend. We've decided to go and see it as it's so close - it's an easy daytrip from London.
Incidentally, for anyone else wanting to do the trip, we discovered that all 'Hypermarches' and Cite de Europe at Calais sont ferme on Sundays - apart from the Sainsbury's wino-mart.

Pics including some slightly terrifying trackwork on St Valery quayside and interesting three way point at Noyelles here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/timmydunn/ ... 969367852/