While traveling by train between Paris-Austerlitz and Blois on the Loire border on IC14041 we were puzzled by a viaduct like construction longing the rails nearby.
I first suspected an industrial transportation system like a viaduct, aqueduct etc., as those can be found somewhere else in this flat region, for example stone transport from a quarry.
The above pictured viaduct however, as research revealed, is the relict of an experimental track for the high speed train aerotrain developed by Jean Bertin in the sixties.
The project has been completely forgotten by now and is sparsely documented. A very complete article, Building a High-Speed Society by Vincent Guigueno1 shows some interesting pictures of the aerotrain
The residual track on the connection Paris – Orly – Orléans is only a very small portion as shows this map of its proposed network.
Concerning the then innovative technology, Edward Gross writes2:
The French Aerotrain straddles an inverted T-bar, the bar fitting into a longitudinal slot in the train’s under- side. Cushions of air compressed by fans from a 720-horsepower aircraft turbine prevent the car from touching either the wall it straddles or the flat surface over which it rides.
The train reached a top speed of over 400 km/h, a record. The project was finally rejected in favor of the TGV.
The lines implanted in the landscape are now often abandoned, cut where needed, but too expensive for demolition. Sometimes they are used now for graffiti propaganda addressed to the train passengers.
An inventory of this type of industrial building cannot be found in the Becher3 books. However, central France is a heaven for these typologies. We dream actually of a long road trip documenting the industrial heritage of this region.
location: Cercottes, France
Time: 26/07/2014
Psychogeography (Chtcheglov): bizarre