Quote:
Originally Posted by Rachel French
Well, what a wonderful forum this is turning out to be. Everyone is so friendly, knowledgeable and helpful.
I've taken on board all your extremely useful information and note the comment about the best times being from Tuesday to Friday so I'll change my 'away day' from Sunday to midweek.
A couple of days ago at one of our local 'bargain shops' I bought the last copy of a 2010 French atlas and it was good to get information from because not only did it have a good scale (1cm = 2km) but it showed a lot of railway lines with crossings, stations and bridges, all very clearly marked.
What I need to look for now on the internet is a map of France showing all the railway lines so that I can get as varied locations as possible (from the busy lines to the rarely used ones) for the photos.
So thank you for all your information which I've started to put on a chart with all the places I need to visit and this will be added to on a regular basis. I'll no doubt be posting some of the resulting photos in due course.
I used to visit the GC line at Rothley and also visited Bridgnorth and Doncaster of numerous occasions, so it's nice to keep in touch with what's going on in the UK through the forum posts and photos. Now I've found this site, I can have my weekly fix of railway topics. What's so good about the photos is that they range from the very old steam engines to the most modern and up to date railway stock.
What started out as a lot of unknown is now turning into a wonderful organised project and I'm really beginning to enjoy myself. It's thanks to all of you that I've got this far. I thought I'd be on my own with this but far from it. Thank you!
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Try this, Rachel; it shows all the main lines, although I suspect a lot of minor lines might need a bit more work:-
http://www.bonjourlafrance.com/franc...-map-large.htm
Incidentally, have a go at searching for Villeneuve St Georges (near Paris) on Google Earth, and fiddle around until you find the HUGE yard there - there's a very large depot to the immediate west of part of the yard. The station at Villeneuve St Georges is very busy with commuter trains, long distance trains, TGVs and freight; it's on the line from Paris Austerlitz to Tours & Bordeaux, and Limoges and Toulouse.
If you want to photograph locomotives, try Toulouse Matabiau station; it's not only very busy, but the loco depot is right next to the station - I've managed to get the numbers of nearly 50 locos at the depot in a very short time without actually going to the depot!
It's always worth trying Google Earth to see what a place is like, where the yards & station are etc, and where the bridges are.
