The geography of the Chemin de Fer du Médoc was extremely simple. It had one main line, from Bordeaux-St. Louis to Le Verdon and the Pointe de Grave at the northern extremity of the Médoc peninsula, and a few short side branches. First projected in 1852, it was opened by stages between 1868 and 1875 (to Le Verdon). Local landowners, initially supportive of the scheme, began to cool off as construction dragged on. Hardly any bridging and no tunnelling were required, the whole landscape being very flat; only the crossing of a marsh on the Saussac - Milieu section, caused any difficulty. One constraint was that the military authorities (France being quite 'twitchy' at the time) insisted that the line be out of sight and range from enemy ships' guns on the Gironde, and therefore at least 1500 m from the shoreline or at worst masked by trees. Hence the alignment, well inland, except for a loop to serve Pauillac.
The inaugural train reached Soulac on 2nd. August 1874, carrying 100 first-class, 196 second-class and 728 third-class passengers. To fête the occasion in both sacred and secular fashion, monks from Notre-Dame de la Fin des Terres set up an altar on the edge of the forest; and the awesome wine-list at the banquet included many of the most prestigious crus from up the line. The following year the service was extended to Le Verdon. Two years later, the steamer link across the estuary to Royan was established. There being no quay at Le Verdon, passengers transferred to the ferry in rowing boats; a pier was built in 1877.
To reach the Pointe itself, tourists changed into wagonnets - horse-drawn 'toast-rack' cars, running on the tracks which the Ponts-et-Chaussées had built to maintain the sea defences. This major work had been going on since 1843, and the necessity for it was underlined when the track was swept away by winter tides and storms in 1893.
The CF du Médoc now sought to extend its own line to the Pointe, but again met the resistance of the Ministry for War, which banned the erection of a water tower which might serve as a ranging and aiming mark for a seaborne assault (conveniently overlooking the presence of an existing lighthouse!), and demanded that the station buildings be single-storey and readily dismantled should the need arise. Locomotives had to go back to Le Verdon for servicing and turning. This extension was opened in 1902.
Meanwhile, the CF Économiques were establishing a network of lines in the Landes. The CFM agreed to give them free access to Bordeaux-St.Louis and to Lesparre for their two routes from Lacanau. In return, the CFM would work Margaux - Castelnau and the spur to Port-des-Pilotes on the southern edge of Pauillac. Opened in 1887, the latter served to export wooden pit-props to Great Britain and receive coal inwards; it never carried a passenger service. CFM proposed a further branch from Moulis to Lamarque, on the river, from where a ferry would connect with Blaye on the right bank. The infrastructure was completed but track never laid as, by then, the Etat had already reached Blaye and offered a direct service from Bordeaux on its own metals and those of its secondaire subsidiaries.
Appontements de Pauillac-Trompeloup circa 1980. CFM No 24 (Fives-Lille 1883 - later Midi No 374) brings a mixed train to the quay. A contemporary caption grandly describes this as a 'Train Transatlantique'! (AH Collection)
Of much greater substance was the connection to the Appontements de Trompeloup, also at Pauillac, where a deep-water landing stage was opened in 1893. Initially opposed by the Port of Bordeaux which saw it as a threat, this was largely financed by Eugène Pereire of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. The dockside had five tracks, 25 turntables and 18 hydraulic cranes. As an example, 198 ships were handled in 1901 alone. In 1913 an experimental airmail service was flown from Paris (Villacoublay) to connect with a transatlantic sailing. The pilot landed his Morane-Saulnier monoplane in a field at Pauillac, and the castor-oil lubricant for his rotary engine was topped-up by a local pharmacist! In WW 1, American forces used the installations to land matériel. In 1944, German troops destroyed the landing stage in their rearguard action. It was rebuilt on a smaller scale in 1952 and was used for oil traffic for some time. There is still a railway track running on to the pier through an industrial estate, and in 2004, large notices proclaim that the facility is used for the giant Airbus A 380 prototype, currently under construction: the wings of the prototype are made at Chester, shipped to Pauillac and forwarded by road for assembly at Toulouse. Where is the logic in logistics?
By 1911, the CFM was struggling. Its traffic was highly seasonal, relying on holidaymakers and the brief influx of grape-pickers from the Pyrenees; it needed quantities of rolling stock for these peaks, which lay idle in open sidings for eight months of the year. Revenue barely covered the cost of maintenance. The Médoc was a 'small-engine' line, having nothing bigger than 0-6-0 or 2-4-0 tender locos, and a variety of tank engines: 30 locomotives, of 15 different types! Perhaps the most attractive were a pair of 4-4-0Ts, one of which was illustrated in Journal 90.
There was competition from steamers on the river offering better facilities for pleasure travellers (restaurants on board); the Etat lines on the opposite bank offered better connections to the popular destination of Royan; some of its tourist traffic was being drained off by its supposed ally the Economiques. I have found scant information on goods traffic. The commodity associated with the Médoc in most minds - its world-renowned wines - is surprisingly absent from accounts of the CFM. However, the great names of the Médoc might be reluctant to entrust their château-bottled wares to a common carrier (and certainly not to be sloshed about in wagons-foudres!), and it is clear that boats continued to be used to transport wine to Bordeaux itself. A steelworks opened at Pauillac in 1901, but most of its materials went directly in (ore from Spain) and out by water and it closed soon after WW 1.
A Law of 1 December 1911 authorised the Midi to purchase the CF du Médoc, becoming effective on 1 June 1912. The Midi no doubt brought in bigger locomotives (4-6-0s and Pacifics) and better rolling stock. Its greatest effort went into trying to establish a true ocean liner terminal. A deep-water wharf at Le Verdon had first been mooted in 1908, but nothing was done before 1914, and a start was further delayed until 1929, making use of war-reparations funds.
A curved viaduct, 312 m. long, carried a double track and a roadway. At the terminal the tracks fanned out into two passenger and two goods lines, whilst the road rose on a ramp to a second deck, claimed as the first instance of segregated traffics at a port. The passenger terminal was finished in Art Deco style and opened on 22 July 1933, when the liner Champlain docked from New York and 241 passengers were whisked to Paris-Orsay by special train, with signalmen instructed to give it absolute priority. The following year the line to the Môle du Verdon was electrified, together with the continuation to Pointe de Grave. Almost all traffic was then in the hands of Midi BB locomotives of several classes.
However, the splendid new terminal never really came into its own. Shipping lines continued to use Bordeaux itself, thinking that the three hours taken to navigate the Gironde were of little consequence after a 16-day crossing from South America. Furthermore, Cherbourg Maritime opened in the same year, a much more logical calling-point for sailings between northern Europe and North America, whilst Lisbon continued to be favoured for the southern sea routes. Once the SNCF was formed, there was no point in sending trains transatlantiques 100 km in the 'wrong' direction. The Môle was principally used by cruise liners and ship-loads of British and Irish pilgrims to Lourdes.
In 1944 the area was the scene of a fiercely fought last stand of German troops, who dynamited the ocean terminal. Part of the viaduct was rehabilitated in 1966 for use by oil tankers, but this ceased in the mid 1970s with the closure of the Bordeaux refineries. From that time dates the present container terminal. One's impression is that this in turn has been under-utilised, but, as reported in the last Journal, the rail connection has been upgraded (if rather half-heartedly according to our observations) in the latest effort to exploit the maritime possibilities of the Médoc.
Passenger services still run to Le Verdon, using Z2 EMUs and RIO push-pull sets with BB 8500s, though Pointe-de-Grave is served only at summer peak times. In the forest a tourist train, the PGV (Pointe de Grave - Le Verdon - Soulac), uses draisines on the track belonging to the Port Authority.
The container terminal at Le Verdon is all but deserted on 8 September 1992. On the extreme right is the jetty of the disused oil terminal, the first two spans of which appear to be a remnant of the concrete Môle. The Pointe de Grave is out of picture to the right, and beyond the peninsula, in the sea mist, can be seen the Phare du Cordouan. (Pilote-Opérateur: Mike McCormac)