2025 has been designated the ‘Year of Railways’, as it is 200 years since the Stockton to Darlington line opened, generally considered the world’s first public passenger line. The special trains and exhibitions being held to commemorate the anniversary will be covered extensively in Britain’s railway magazines. But what about railways across the Channel?
Some 70 years ago a little-known British novelist called Bryan Morgan took the ferry to Calais and embarked on a tour of Europe by train. Rather than taking the sleek new electric and diesel expresses that were setting speed records on the main lines, he chose to travel on the slow, all-stations stopping trains that then meandered across the continent on a spider’s web of secondary railways. He detailed his extensive journey in The End of the Line.
France to Belgium
From Calais-Ville station, a fascinating narrow-gauge line weaved its way south to Montreuil-sur-Mer and Berck-Plage. Over to the west, elegant steam locomotives with pointed firebox doors hauled Victorian carriages with quadrant windows through the otherwise dreary industrial towns of Denain and Somain.
Heading south, there were fascinating independent lines in the Loire Valley, two narrow-gauge systems in Brittany, a delightfully shabby railway linking Égreville and Montereau and “100 miles of rickety track” in Corrèze that afforded “one of the most adorably varied travel experiences in Europe”. The journey through France concluded with the scenic delights of the Vivarais mountains in Ardèche, a rather sad look at a dying network of lines in the Tarn and a more upbeat journey on the thriving line from Digne to Nice.
While Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg merit only a short chapter between them, Morgan’s journey around Italy is described in detail; starting in the north with a gorgeous journey from Brescia to Iseo. He zigzags through the country, travelling on a steam tram in Monza, electric trains around Perugia and the extensive narrow-gauge network around Naples. He admires the architecture of the country’s stations but hates their practice of only opening their ticket offices a few minutes before the train is due to depart.
Switzerland and Austria
Switzerland also enjoys a very comprehensive chapter in The End of the Line, but Morgan is not always complimentary. He describes Lucerne as “one of those big, elegant, touristic Swiss cities endued with every virtue except the ability to make one want to stop there for more than five minutes”. Although he admires the Swiss Railways’ spectacular engineering works and scenery, he dislikes the high fares and the fact that every Swiss train appears “as if it had been built from a standard pattern a few months before”. Nevertheless, he manages to find some great trips and includes a wonderful account of a spring journey from Zweisimmen to Montreux.
Austrian railways fill a short chapter that includes narrow and standard-gauge private lines and an amusing account of how a stationmaster’s wife ensured that her husband did not send a train off too early.
Germany
Morgan praises West German railways for their efficiency and comfort but dislikes their complicated fare structure and the need to pay supplements for long-distance trains. His lengthy ramble takes him north from Bavaria to the Baltic coast, stopping in the Black Forest, the Rhineland and the Moselle to sample local railways, experiencing a taste of the supernatural on a branch line in the Westerwald (‘Warlocks in Homburg hats’) and cursing when a train is cancelled at short notice, stranding him for four hours in a town “so isolated that the local cinema was announcing: ‘At Last! Gone With the Wind!’”
Morgan’s account of his travels, The End of the Line, was published by the Cleaver-Hume Press. It did not top the bestsellers’ lists, perhaps because there was rather too much technical information for the casual traveller but not enough to satisfy the dedicated railfan. But the humour, the accounts of mishaps, conversations with fellow travellers or railway staff – and descriptions, warts and all, of the countries visited, makes it one of the finest and funniest travelogues of all time.
The book certainly encouraged the railway preservation movement in Europe, especially in France. A steady stream of enthusiasts started exploring the little-known lines described so lovingly by Morgan. Writers such as WJK Davies and D Trevor Rowe published their own books on European railways, and without them it is unlikely that the flourishing preservation movement in Europe would ever have got underway.
Railway preservation in Europe
So what remains of this amazing network of minor railways that inspired Morgan 70 years ago? Even then, the increasing ownership of private cars meant that many of them were living on borrowed time. The line running south from Calais to Berck is long gone, while that from Somain to Denain, after years of dereliction, has recently been revived as part of the new Valenciennes tram network. The wonderful Vivarais has been reduced to two isolated tourist lines, although at least these enable the traveller to enjoy the same scenery as Morgan while travelling behind an 0-6-6-0T Mallet steam locomotive.
The narrow-gauge line from Nice to Digne in Provence still survives, having weathered numerous closure attempts, although its magnificent former terminus in Nice – “a great palm-planted Baroque cathedral of a place” – has been abandoned in favour of a modest modern station a little further from the city centre. Perhaps the closest thing to a real ‘Bryan Morgan’ experience is to travel along the still-open narrow-gauge ‘Blanc-Argent’ line from Salbris to Valençay in the Loire Valley. Although its 1950s railcars were replaced by modern articulated units at the turn of the century, it still has a wonderful timeless secondary railway atmosphere.
The lines that survive
Many of the lines described by Morgan in Italy still survive, including the delightful railway running from Brescia along the shore of Lake Iseo to Edolo. The charming narrow-gauge line from Domodossola to Locarno, described by Morgan as “one of the loveliest lines of the continent” still provides an efficient passenger service and offers a wonderful scenic journey to Switzerland, where there have been very few line closures and where The End of the Line can still be used as a contemporary travel guide. In Austria, the narrow-gauge Zillertal railway, the Pinzgau line to Krimml and the rack-and-pinion lines to the Schafberg and the Achensee can still be enjoyed, but the delightful Salzkammergut Local Railway from Salzburg to Bad Ischl has disappeared.
The various German branch-lines travelled by Morgan have seen varied fortunes since the publication of his book. The Chiemsee and Tegernsee railways that open his German chapter have barely changed in 70 years, the former even retaining the same steam locomotive. Moving north, some lines have vanished, some are now seasonal tourist attractions while others, enjoying increased prosperity, have lost their character through modernisation.
Morgan describes the private steam-worked Kaiserstuhlbahn railway near Freiburg as “a happy thing … it runs by rural lowland ways and lingers long at stations used mainly by drowsy butterflies”. He would probably be surprised to learn that this line now offers a high-frequency service with brand new electric multiple-units! Similarly, the delightfully decaying Hümmlinger Kreisbahn, on which Morgan rode in a narrow-gauge steam train, is now a modern industrial standard-gauge spur worked by drab diesel locomotives.
A changed Europe?
Europe has changed in many ways since 1955, but, despite fast new high-speed lines that would have astounded Morgan, her railways have arguably resisted most of these changes. Each country’s network retains its own characteristics: most French lines have very infrequent services compared with those in Germany and Italy; Switzerland retains an intricate network of electrified lines serving tiny hamlets while many sizeable towns elsewhere in Europe lack any kind of railway. Many Italian ticket offices still remain stubbornly closed until a few minutes before the train is due, although fortunately automatic ticket-machines are now also available!
But, more seriously, Europe’s railways still use different systems of electrification and signalling, meaning that cross-border services are restricted to certain routes and can only be operated by expensive, specially built trains. Some cross-border lines have been closed since 1955, including the French section of the erstwhile international line from Nyon to Morez, one of Morgan’s favourites. However, with EU freedom of movement, there would be no risk of a repeat of Morgan’s mishap on the border between Italy and Austria, when he left his compartment for a few minutes and came back to find that his suitcase had been confiscated by Italian customs staff!
Morgan should have the last word on borders:
“What wasteful and pointless and humiliating nonsense all frontier formalities are!”
For many years it seemed that these pointless formalities were on their way out, and had the UK joined the Schengen zone we might have had uninterrupted travel from Sheffield to Salzburg. But from 2016 we have chosen to erect more barriers.
