COMMENTS TO MY PAGE "ART POSTCARDS WITH A RAILWAY MOTIVE"

       

     Chemins de fer du Midi

The Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi, commonly known as the Midi Railway Company, was a prominent French railway operator in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to railways, the company also operated canals, including the Canal latéral à la Garonne and the Canal du Midi. Company was created in 1852. The same year, the company received the concession for the line from Bordeaux to Sète, to which the Bordeaux-Bayonne and Narbonne-Perpignan lines were quickly added. The Midi completed its mainline from Bordeaux to Toulouse in 1856 and extended it from Toulouse through Narbonne to Sète by 1857 to which the Bordeaux-Bayonne and Narbonne-Perpignan lines were quickly added. In 1909, the Compagnie du Midi launched a vast program to electrify its lines.  This was an immense challenge for the time because it went far beyond the scope of railway operations alone. It was necessary to build all the production infrastructure such as dams, production plants and the entire current distribution system, but also to build the engines and equip the lines. This effort was driven by the company's distance from coal production centers and the potential for hydroelectric power from the Pyrenees. By 1923, the majority of the network operated at 1,500 V direct current (DC), aligning with government mandates. In 1934 The Midi merged with the Chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans, forming the Chemins de fer de Paris à Orléans et du Midi (PO-Midi). The PO-Midi was, along with other major French railway companies, nationalized in 1938 to form the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF), consolidating France's railway operations under a single state-owned entity.

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.