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Railway history began in France, as in many other places, as a means of transporting or hauling freight – in France it was primarily minerals that were first transported along rails. The first real passenger railway to appear in France was in 1832, yet it was not for another decade before railway construction on a larger scale really got underway in France. There was huge opposition to railway development from farmers, waterways, coastal shipping companies and groups of people who today would be called environmentalists, fearful of the effect this strange new machine would have on the traditional way of life in rural France.
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By 1842, with the support and financial assistance of the French government, a major construction process begun. Several companies began work, the most successful of them being the Compagnie du Nord, set up by the Rothschild families, and which was to operate trains from Paris (Gare du Nord) to the Channel coast and on into Kortrijk and Ghent in Belgium. Other companies failed, having to be bailed out by the French state. Indeed throughout this period the government of France was heavily involved, setting fares, guaranteeing that the companies would make sufficient dividends to repay their other shareholders but taking a large percentage of any profits above a specified amount.
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Throughout its railway history France has regarded its rail network as a national asset rather than a commodity to be bought at a price according to market rates, and this attitude persists today, one reason why France has, perhaps, led the rest of Europe in developing a high-speed rail network.
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Yet the early days threw up several major inefficiencies, prime among them being that all routes radiated from Paris but none criss-crossed the country. Thus freight or passengers from say Clermont-Ferrand to Lyon (just 120 kms distant) had to travel via Paris, making the journey in excess of 700 kms. These inefficiencies were shown up in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 when it proved impossible to get troops to the front fast enough. By 1914 the French rail system had exploded in size, covering no less than 60,000 kms (37,000 miles), although one-third of that was narrow-gauge. By the 1930s road competition had become intense and led first to the closure of the narrow-gauge lines, most of which were short, rural routes rather than links between major towns.
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SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) was formed in 1938 when the five existing railway companies covering France were nationalised and brought together. That has remained the case ever since though recently European regulations have forced SNCF to divest itself of the tracks and stations, passing them to another company, supposedly independent to adhere to European regulations – but still very closely linked even if informally. The current network consists of about 40,000 kms overall, 2,000 kms of which is high-speed line (plus more planned) and in total about 15,000 kms is electrified, primarily with overhead catenary. It operates close to 14,000 trains each day.
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