TRIP OVER ANNEL

performance with that of a medium-sized French ‘Pacific’ hauling a similar 475-ton load on a line with a number of steep gradients. Rather than the Le Havre route, which had standard express loads of up to 600 tonnes but was mainly level apart from the climb to the Normandy plateau north-west of Rouen (including a long 1-in-125 bank out of Le Havre) I have selected a run on the more difficult Cherbourg line in 1964, when diesels were beginning to impact on steam turns. At the end of May 1964 I was privileged to make a footplate trip between Caen and Paris (148.45 miles ) on the 07.00 express from Cherbourg, Train 302, on one of the 134 ‘Pacifics’ of the SNCF Western Region’s Class 231D. These locomotives dated from 1916-22 - in other words their design pre-dated Gresley’s ‘A1’. Before describing the run shown in Table 2, I thought it would be useful to explain the genesis of the 231D class, since most readers will be unfamiliar with them. Railways in France were nationalised in 1938, and the area served by the Cherbourg and Le Havre main lines (which were actually built by Joseph Locke) belonged originally to the Chemin de fer de l’Ouest, whose territory covered large tracts of agricultural western France. Lacking the coal revenues of the Nord or Est companies, the Ouest always struggled financially and was taken over by the state in 1908, becoming known as the Réseau État (or ‘State Network’).