 |
| Photo courtesy of Pixabay and Wikimedia |
I’ve
reached my final destination on this particular journey, and what an interesting
and unusual travelogue this has been.
But I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the posts as much as I have enjoyed
the research and the writing.
Although
the end for the Granville-Paris express was catastrophic in some respects, for
me, the arrival at the last stop is a bitter disappointment. Read on.
Gare
Montparnasse was originally named Gare de l’Ouest and was one of the central
termini across the city of Paris. It was
opened in 1840 and was a glowing example of mid-nineteenth century architecture,
as old photos demonstrate. The architect
was Louis Visconti, and the original building had footfall of 490,000 passengers
annually as early as 1844.
In 1852, a second station was built a little further down the track, which enabled
expansion to cope with the ever-increasing traffic, the addition of new lines,
and the then fashion for train travel.
The passenger traffic had expanded to 1.4 million by1854 and had become
a major hub for the Compagnie chemin-de-fer de l’Ouest.
In
1895, when the travellers on The Paris Express arrived at around four in
the afternoon, it would have been the second building that they saw. We now only have the old photos of those
original buildings and, of course, the photo of the crash that was published in
newspapers across the world.
Amazingly,
there was only one fatality, Marie Aguilard, the newspaper seller whose kiosk
was directly below the site of the incident.
She had taken over from her husband temporarily whilst he went to
collect the next edition. Some of the passengers and crew received some minor injuries, and the other passengers
waiting for the train were similarly lucky.
Naturally, the damage resulting from the crash was repaired, and the station
continued to serve the people of Paris.
The
coming of the great exhibition in 1900 brought further expansion and the creation
of new routes. The twentieth century was
a key turning point for Paris Montparnasse.
In 1944, the station became a landmark.
On August 25th, General Leclerc accepted the surrender of
General von Choltitz within the confines of the station, and the liberation of
Paris began. Some twenty years later, during
the 60s and 70s, the station was reconstructed and integrated into a vast
urban project. In 1969 the old station was
demolished, and the Tour Montparnasse was constructed as a memorial and included alongside the vast complex of glass and steel that we now see today. The new station, designed by Eugéne Beaudouin
and Urbain Cassan, now has a footfall of 50 million travellers a year. That’s a lot of people, and I have to wonder
how many of them know what happened on October 22nd, 1895...
You can catch up with the
previous posts in this series by clicking the following links: Granville part 1, Granville part 2, Vire, Flers, Briouze, Argentan Surdon and Dreux. My review of the book,
The Paris Express, is Here
