The Forth Rail Bridge opened on the 4th March 1890; a short documentary about the bridge:

There is a phenomenon in the USA where some trains are 'street running' for parts of their routes.  I think that could be dangerous though if people are used to it they'll likely know what precautions to take.I don't know that we have street running trains in the UK - part of the West Midlands Metro runs on the street but that is a tram service rather than a train service.  Here is one such route in Tampa, Florida (relevant part starts at about 0:29

There's still a rail line running along the main street of the spa town of Bad Doberan in North Germany:



I have a dim childhood memory of a holiday to Barmouth in North Wales sometime in the early 1960s; of standard gauge steam trains running through the town along one of the streets ... presumably (if my memory is indeed correct) the line coming from Ruabon which joined with the main Cambrian coast line at Barmouth Station (until the Ruabon branch was closed by Dr Beeching). Can anyone verify if this is true or is my memory completely playing false?

Until the late 1980s regular British Rail passenger trains continued to run through the streets of Weymouth to link with the Channel Island ferries that docked at Weymouth Quay (note the train is preceded by a pilot car bearing a large "caution" sign on its roof:

Good finds, MM.  I did a google search for street-running trains UK and came across this https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/122818-street-running-in-the-uk/page/3/ though the examples of such trains have disappeared.  Thinking back I have a vague memory of a small locomotive moving by the Liverpool docks before much of the activity moved to Southampton (admittedly I was a toddler but when we were going to visit relations in the Liverpool area I remember my mother pointing at a ship and saying it was the Empress of Somewhere (maybe Canada)).  I can remember travelling on the old (now vanished) overhead railway in Liverpool.  I can also remember changing trains from Lime Street Station to Exchange Station (to visit relations in and around Crosby) and it was quite a walk.  It's all much more closely linked now and you can travel direct from Lime Street to Waterloo (which is on the Southport line - when I went to a funeral I walked down the main road from Waterloo to the church where the funeral was being held which was a little way over the Crosby border) though I haven't been to Liverpool for at least a decade.

A steam buff traces the Weymouth street running tramway.  Just in case anybody is being pernickety and thinking well these street-running trains aren't exactly "great" railways I wasn't sure that the subject of street-running trains merited its own thread. Mind you, depending how much a person likes railways an argument could be made that to some people railways in general are "great". 

The Ghan. Australian rail route from Darwin to Adelaide:

Meles meles wrote:

But the trains were all so much slower then, taking typically 8 hours or so to get between major cities, journeys that these days would take a couple of hours with barely time to have a nap. And of course back then you got lots of stamps in the passport: not just the visa and the normal entry and exit stamps, but odd date stamps and customs stamps from various train officials too.

That reminds me of taking a train from England to Italy to visit friends there in the early 1980s. It was a hot August day and the train was in the Maurienne valley in the French Alps approaching the Italian border. I say ‘approaching’  but it was one of those sections of a railway journey in which a train decelerates to a slow speed and then comes to a stop between stations for no apparent reason, it then waits on that spot for an inordinately long period of time before lurching forward for a few metres and then stopping again for an even longer period of time before lurching forward again only to crawl forward a few metres more before coming to a stop yet again. All-in-all it promotes a disconsolate feeling and this was evidenced by the sighing, tutting, huffing, puffing and generalized comments of discontent from those on board. That feeling wasn’t helped with this stop, go-slow, stop, go-slow motion taking place on the approach to the station at Modane, a decidedly ugly, industrial town on the French frontier, the outskirts of which are a dull array of dirty white, dirty bone and dirty grey buildings scattered alongside extensive railway sidings. An Alpine idyll it is not. If my memory serves me right it was a Sunday because the dusty town was very quiet and the air still on that stifling afternoon.

The reason for the delay became apparent when the douane and police then came aboard to check papers and bags etc. We all duly took out our relevant documents. When they came my compartment, a man whose passport showed that he hailed from Mauritius was told loudly by the officers that a stamp in his book meant “pas en France” and that he would have to pick up his bag and leave the train with them. I can only guess that being from Mauritius he had probably travelled to La Reunion or some such place, had subsequently fallen foul of the law there and (after having his passport docked) had been deported. How he managed to then end up in the south of France with such a document was anybody’s guess. It did seem strange, however, that as he was in the process of leaving France (i.e. for Italy) and was considered persona non grata in France, that the officials were nevertheless insistent on detaining him in France.

Now, at that time Mauritius was still a Commonwealth of Nations realm and the front of his battered, old, blue (and now suspect) passport read ‘British Passport – Mauritius’ complete with Lion & Unicorn coat of arms. It did seem quite old-looking even then and was probably out of date or maybe counterfeit. Nevertheless, when they came to look at my blue passport reading ‘British Passport – United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland’ complete with Lion & Unicorn coat of arms they (somewhat understandably) assumed that we were together and then ordered me to collect my bags and follow them too. With some degree of indignation but having been brought up to respect uniformed public officials, I stood up to comply but had visions of entering a Kafkaesque nightmare whereby the more I protested, the guiltier I would seem to them. But protest I had to. My great act of resistance consisted of me mumbling “Why do I have to get off the train?” rather weakly. This was simply ignored by the police one of whom merely responded by giving me a firm shove on the shoulder to guide me down the corridor.

In the end it was the Mauritian himself who came to my rescue. At the end of the carriage and as he stepped down onto the platform he turned to the police with the smirk of someone well used to dealing with ‘les flics’ and said in French – “I’ve never met this man before in my life and only just spoke to him briefly on the train. You really might want to check his passport again.” This seemed to do the trick as the officer behind, stopped me, held out his hand in an imperious gesture and grunted “passeport!”. I handed him the book which he briefly perused before snorting, handing it back to me and without even looking me in the eye, dismissed me with a flick of his wrist “retournez” sending me back to my compartment where the other passengers either averted their eyes or else gave me accusatory glances as though I were somehow responsible for the delay.




(Mauritian passport c. 1968)


The train then left Modane (minus 1) and shortly entered the Fréjus Tunnel. Not to be confused with Fréjus on the Côte d'Azur (which is 150 km further south), the Fréjus Tunnel is also known as the Mont Cenis Tunnel because it passes under that range of the Alps. When work on the tunnel began in 1857 it was intended to link 2 parts of Savoy, then a domain of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. Indeed, the House of Savoy was the royal house of that kingdom. It was also hugely ambitious as too was the proposed tunnel which would be nearly 14 kms in length. This would make it well over double the length of the longest railway tunnel then in existence which was the Standedge tunnel under the Pennines in northern England at 3 miles (5 kms) long. The challenges, which included cutting thru unknown deep Alpine rock, providing adequate ventilation, risk of flooding from uncharted underground rivers or lakes and other unforeseen difficulties were more than daunting. Even the most optimistic estimates suggested that such an excavation would take at least 20 years to complete. Then there was the question of funding. Such a project would have caused even the great engineering concerns and financial institutions of, say, Britain or America to baulk, let alone those of a relatively small country such as Savoy.

Within a year of the start of the work, however, the political map of the Alps would change significantly. The international standing of Sardinia-Piedmont had been boosted by that state’s participation in the Allied effort during the Crimean War 3 years earlier. That, coupled with the impressive and ongoing industrialization of the country (particularly in the capital Turin), meant that prime minister Camillo Benso (Count Cavour) was taken seriously in Paris and London etc and consequently had a very good international credit rating. Cosying up to Napoleon III of France in particular, was the main thrust of Cavour’s foreign policy. An alliance with France was seen as the best guarantee against Piedmont’s long-time adversary Austria. So single-minded was Cavour in seeking to secure French diplomatic, financial and military support, that this even extended as far as agreeing to cede all of Savoy west of the Alpine watershed (i.e. the bulk of the duchy) to France. And to sweeten things further, the king of Piedmont’s daughter Clotilde was married off to Napoleon’s cousin Jerome Bonaparte, while Cavour’s own cousin, the beautiful countess of Castiglione, was sent to Paris to become Napoleon’s mistress and seal the deal as it were. In return all Piedmont had to do was - provoke a risky war with Austria.




(Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione c. 1858 - courtesan, model and Savoyard spy)


Back in Savoy, work on the tunnel (which would now link France and Piedmont) continued. And as it was now a partially French project, ample credit was able to be secured in Paris. Under the direction of local Savoyard civil engineer Germaine Sommeiller work picked up apace. In 1861 Sommeiller introduced a revolutionary pneumatic drill. His patented design combined the use of compressed air for both percussion and rotation (i.e. hammering and screwing) whereas previous drills had done either one or the other. Mounting as few as 4 of these drills onto the front of carriage frame produced a formidable boring machine capable of chewing thru all but the hardest of rocks. The advent of Alfred Nobel’s dynamite 6 years later also meant that even the hardest rocks could from then on be easily shattered and the pace of progress picked up further.

Meanwhile the map of Europe would change again. The aforementioned war with Austria in 1859 had seen victory for the Franco-Piedmontese alliance. This resulted in Lombardy and Tuscany being annexed to Piedmont doubling the size of the realm of the Piedmontese king Victor Emmanuel II. The loss to France of the bulk of his ancestral duchy of Savoy (along with Nice) must, however, have seemed a fair exchange to him when, within the year, Giuseppe Garibaldi succeeded in overthrowing the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the name of Italian unification while Piedmont annexed the eastern half of the Papal States. Thus the Piedmontese realm now extended the length of the Italian peninsular. In 1861 Victor Emmanuel was duly proclaimed King of Italy by the newly convened Italian parliament in Turin.
 
So, the tunnel which had started out as a plan to link Savoy to Savoy had gone from that to one linking France to Piedmont and then from that to ending up linking France to Italy. This now made it a much more significant project with corresponding implications for funding and support.

In December 1870 workers excavating from the Italian side broke thru to greet their French counterparts tunneling in the opposite direction. For the latter, however, there must have been mixed emotions. This was, after all, while Paris was under siege that winter and came only a couple of months after Napoleon III had been captured by the Prussians following his disastrous defeat at Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War. Whereas the tunnel project had begun with Napoleon successfully gambling on provoking a war with Austria it had ended 13 years later with him miscalculating with a similar gamble provoking Prussia.
         
Yet the tunnel was complete and indeed completed several years ahead of schedule. Great plaudits and honours were afforded Germaine Sommeiller from around the world on such a magnificent achievement. As with Cavour (who 10 years earlier had died shortly after witnessing Italian unification) Sommeiller witnessed the completion of the tunnel but would die before its official opening in September 1871. The Fréjus Tunnel would remain an engineering wonder of the world before being eclipsed by the fame of longer Alpine tunnels at Saint-Gotthard and Simplon. Those tremendous feats in turn would be dwarfed by the staggeringly long base-tunnels dug under the Alps at the beginning of the 21st Century.

When on that August day more than 100 years after the tunnel had opened, my train finally emerged on the Italian side, the contrast with French side couldn’t have been more different. Whereas the Haute-Maurienne valley had had a semi-arid and bleak appearance, the Val di Susa was lush and thickly wooded. The sky above the former had been a hazy yellow and the air oppressive while now the sky was blue with wispy white clouds and a delicious summer breeze greeted us thru the windows carrying with it the scent of pine, beech, larch, spruce and chestnut. The memory of the industrial grimness of Modane now contrasted markedly with the prettiness of the resort town of Bardonecchia at the other end of the tunnel. Everyone’s spirits seemed to be lifted by this wholesale change of aspect. It was going to be a good holiday after all.




(Portal of the Fréjus Tunnel today at the Italian entrance)

That was really interesting Viz, so thankyou. 

I have things to add to all that, particularly about the equivalent western French/Spanish railway connection through the Pyrenees to Spain. So wait just a bit until I've got my thoughts together for a proper response.

However in the meantime ... sorry but I just can't resist a 'caption comment' to your photo of the ever elegant Countess of Castiglione.



... "Does my bum look big in this?" or maybe, "I don't know why but I believe there are a couple of dwarves in a small pantomime pony costume who seem to continuously follow me around everywhere I go. I've never seen them as they're always just out of sight, somewhere around the back where I can't see. But I'm sure they're there, hidden, somewhere."

But now let's get back to a rather different type of train ...

Further to your excellent history of the Fréjus tunnel, Viz, it is interesting to note that while the tunnel and subsequent mainline railway link between SE France and NW Italy was completed in 1871, the corresponding tunnel and railway connection on the western side of the French Mediterranean coast - that linking SW France through the southern Pyrenees to NE Spain - was only completed in 2007. This tunnel, just 8.3 km long, consists of twin parallel rail tunnels which were bored simultaneously from the Spanish side. Tunnelling starting in 2005 and the two machines, 'Tramontane' and 'Mistral', broke through in 2007. Freight and TGV trains from Paris through the tunnel via Perpignan started on 21 December 2010 but had to terminate at Figueres until the rest of the line to Barcelona was completed. The whole section from Perpignan to Barcelona was finally opening for service on 8 January 2013.

Here's the tunnel entrance/exit on the French side, on the 23 November 2007, the day the second boring machine, 'Tramontane', broke through to daylight. Note the two concrete tubes with vents/windows that extend out from the actual tunnel portal (which is of course not yet complete) - these are to dissipate the blast of air created when the high speed trains enter or exit the tunnels.



With this tunnel the Spanish high-speed rail network was finally connected to the rest of the European network. Prior to this there had been no continuous rail link at all other than a fairly recently built, standard-gauge, dedicated-freight link that runs through Cerbère, but this doesn't connect to either Spain's domestic broad-gauge network or its standard-gauge, high-speed network. The two countries, France and Spain, have had different gauges ever their since railways developed in the mid-19th century and so in the past you always had to change trains at the frontier. Since about the 1980s there has been a system to physically change the bogies of some express and freight trains as they cross the border - the process of necessity requires the trains to stop but at least you didn't have to get off and change train. However in general terms the rail networks of Spain/Portugal and of France/rest of Europe, were only really connected without a break of gauge just this century. I have heard it said, although with how much authority I do not know, that a major part of the reluctance on Spain's part to adopt the European standard gauge earlier was that, since French trains could not run through the frontier and onto Spanish tracks, this made it harder for France, or indeed Germany, to invade.

This accounts for the entire existence of the French town of Cerbère which developed in the late 19th century as the railway terminus for the French railway system at the entrance to a short Spanish-gauge railway tunnel through the hill to the adjacent Spanish town of Port-Bou and so on to the rest of the Spanish rail network. At Cerbère everyone and everything had to change train. However while passengers could pick up their luggage and walk across to the train waiting to proceed into France or to cross into Spain, all freight  - whether postal packages, delicate baskets of eggs, boxes of fruit, barrels of beer, lengths of timber, crates of bricks or heavy sacks of coal - had to be manhandled across between trains. Until well into the 20th century there was little mechanisation and this work was done almost exclusively by women, the celebrated 'transbordeuses'. Here they are at work sometime around 1900, manually shifting freight between goods trains at Cerbère.



In its heyday Cerbère was simply a transit depot set amongst large railway yards crammed into a small valley between the surrounding hills and the sea. Its whole raison d'être was the railway and there was really no other employment in the town. Today, with the importance of its rail link being very much diminished, the town is trying to market itself as a seaside resort but it is rather out on a limb and isolated from the rest of the other Mediterranean resorts, while the beach, such as it is, is all pebbles. It still sees quite a lot of rail traffic, particularly freight (all Spanish-built motor cars come this way) so it's still of interest to rail enthusiasts; perhaps staying at the celebrated Belvedere railway hotel which opened in 1932, perched directly above the railway tracks as they come into the station. There are however few other attractions.

 

Finally from me, well at least for the moment, here's a Google-Earth screenshot of Port-Bou (Spain) together with Cerbère (France): the two towns being just a couple of kms from each other, but nevertheless separated by an international  frontier plus a railway gauge change.

The view is looking due west, with the international frontier marked by the red line separating the two townships. Note the scale (indicated at extreme bottom-right) and how the two Y-shaped railway yards, tightly crammed into the constricted valleys on either side of the border, are almost larger than their respective towns. The approximate locations for the entrances of the kilometre-long tunnel linking the two termini I have marked with yellow dots.

The difference in gauge between Spain and France also explains why the small Spanish village of Canfranc - situated high in the Pyrenees mountains and with a resident population that has never numbered more than a few hundreds at any time over the past millenium - has one of the grandest railway stations in Europe.





In the mid-nineteenth century there were just two railway crossings between France and Spain; that at the Atlantic end of the Pyrenees at Hendaye/Irun, the other at the Mediterranean end at Cerbère/Boulou. Almost immediately plans were made for a third connection joining the two countries through the high Pyrenees. Work started on the French side in the 1870s but the final tunnel under the pass at Somport connecting the two countries wasn't completed until 1915. The grand international station at Canfranc on the Spanish side, where all passengers and freight would have to change trains because of the gauge difference, wasn't completed until 1923 and was only finally opened in 1928. However shortly after opening the 1929 financial crash hit and then two years later the station was extensively damaged in a fire. Then, in 1936, the Spanish civil war began, followed by the second world war. During the war the Spanish authorities came to an operational agreement with the German authorities in occupied France whereby limited passenger train services continued, while freight trains carried Spanish-mined tungsten north and French grain south, plus, because of its discreet location hidden away in the mountains, occasional trans-shipments of Swiss gold.

By the time hostilities were finally over the Franco dictatorship was isolated and international rail traffic didn’t pick up again until the 1950s by which time air travel was becoming an increasingly popular alternative. In 1970 a train derailment severely damaged a bridge on the French side and provided an excuse to abandon the expensive-to-maintain trans-frontier connection. The station at Canfranc was thus abruptly closed to all international traffic. Since then the enormous 200m-long main station building, built in an elaborate Beaux-Arts style, has been largely abandoned with just a small station building behind the grand original handling a handful of local Spanish services. However repairs to the line on the French side have now started and the intention is to reopen the restored Canfranc station as a hotel, conference centre, railway museum and pilgrim refuge as Canfranc is on one of the routes to Santiago de Compostela.

The WLLR has a Romanian relic - a "rollwagen", which allowed standard-guage wagons to be carried on the Austro-Hungarian "Bosnian" gauge lines. At 760mm, that is sufficiently close to our 2'6" to be workable. Its principal use is to carry a tractor with a flail mower used to tame the exuberance of the lineside verbiage.