Restaurant
car
Among the trains put on display in the half roundhouse, one carriage also acted as a restaurant. In front of the museum, restaurant car CIWLT 3348 was open to individual visitors and groups, and served meals, ice cream and orangeade. This high point of the visit, which was planned as early as in 1968, offered a “user experience” to delight all ages. Carriage 3348 was sent back for restoration to the Saint-Denis workshop in January 1974 before it finally entered the museum. It was replaced by carriage 3349 in May 1974.
According to L’Alsace, you could order takeaway meals and picnic boxes, in what was described by the museum staff as a “typical railways atmosphere”.
Today, carriage 3349 is used by the chocolate museum in Geispolsheim, but is historically related to the 3348, which can be seen in the Show Tour of the Cité du Train.
Virtual tour of the restaurant car
The locomotive and the cook
On 4 June 1971, the members of the association were informed of the imminent arrival of a “unique attraction”. Within the roundhouse, an inspection pit, almost two-metre deep, was dug under track 13 to show the inner mechanisms of the Chapelon locomotive. On 18 June of that same year, the engine was delicately moved over the empty space. Once again, L’Alsace witnessed this uncommon event and gave a very good account of it.
“The Blue Train team were furious yesterday afternoon: the diners had almost not touched their dessert – strawberries with sugar. The young chef was ready to throw in the towel. And that was because the Pacific suddenly hogged the limelight at about two o’clock. It had not moved for a week. It had been given extensive beauty treatment. All its copper and bronze – and there was plenty of it – was polished to a high gloss, in a harmonious contrast with the chocolate livery of this machine from the North. And now, with the help of two shunting locomotives, it looked like it was about to escape”.
– R.F., “The “Pacific” has been placed on its inspection pit” in L’Alsace, 18 June 1971, Cité du Train collection
Lilliput
An undated drawing by Michel Lamarche stored in the Archives of Mulhouse shows a strange convoy. Stored between engineering drawings and administrative correspondence, these miniature train sketches imagined by the railways artist show great sensitivity and poetry. In 1970, Michel Doerr and André Portefaix nurtured the wish to create a Lilliput railway. However, while the miniature scale could take visitors back to their childhoods, it did not allow them to measure the “labour of men” according to Michel Doerr. That meant that the machine and its “engineering reality” had to be demonstrated to visitors. The inspection pit, from where the mechanical innards of the Chapelon Nord 3.1192 locomotive could be seen, helped achieve that aim.
Cards, handkerchiefs
and traditions
With their eyes turned up towards the entrails of the Pacific, or the cutaway view of the Baltic, as they listened to guides or wandered on their own, visitors of all ages discovered the French Railways Museum, or the MFCF as it is now known. Backstage, the museum staff were actively preparing another event: the official inauguration. The Cité du Train has kept the reply coupons, which are valuable traces of that time. Major figures of the French railways such as Marc de Caso or André Chapelon can be seen on these delicate pieces of card. A sheet that is laconically titled “Organisation” tells us about the high points of the day: lunch in the dining rooms of the SIM, speeches, tour of the city, receipt of railway handkerchiefs made specially for the occasion in partnership with the Fabric Printing Museum, not forgetting the young girls from Alsace who held in their hands a major symbol of the history of the museum – the inauguration ribbon.
The ribbon
is cut!
3 July 1971. 7 am Radios across the country were broadcasting news flashes of holiday traffic. As the hours went by, the motorways of Alsace filled up with motorists leaving the Vosges for their holiday destinations. In the offices of the Société Industrielle de Mulhouse and in the French Railways Museum, the atmosphere was just as feverish. They had to get everything ready for the official inauguration of the half roundhouse. On the Buddicom Saint-Pierre, the wooden lectern decorated with the arms of Mulhouse awaited its first speakers.
“[…] Of course, this final Museum will not house only steam locomotives: the first samples of electric and diesel traction will come here when they go out of service. And the powerful CC that is located before the roundhouse will one day become a relic of history, as will the Turbotrain. The vision of the past makes us turn our thoughts to the future. A remarkable conference recently addressed the state of the art in the year 2000. He concluded that the world population would reach 6 billion, that energy, while it was not rare, would have to be managed well, that 85% of the energy would take the form of electricity, that pollution control would become a pressing concern and that transport needs would continuously increase. The railways offer mass transport, which is extremely energy-efficient, and are particularly well suited to the use of electricity, which does not pollute. I would like to tell the founders of the French Railways Museum to leave room for expansion: the railways are only just starting out on their journey! ”
3 July 1971, speech by Chairman André Ségalat at the official inauguration of the French Railways Museum
7.47 am 500 kilometres away, in Paris, a group of people settled in carriage 15 of train 113 bound for Mulhouse. They included: André Ségalat, Chairman of SNCF, particularly accompanied by Mr Henri Lefort, Deputy General Manager, Mr Camille Martin, Equipment and Traction Manager and Mr Marcel Garreau, Honorary Director of SNCF.
12.08 pm Arrival in Mulhouse station. After lunch at the SIM, the officials were transferred by coach to Mulhouse-Nord.
2 pm The ceremony could start. Lit by the flashes of reporters for Loco-Revue or L’Alsace, Jean-Mathis Horrenberger spoke to the audience, followed by André Ségalat. The speech by the Chairman of SNCF still resounds within the walls of the Cité du Train. André Ségalat was optimistic and resolutely visionary, foreseeing the great issues of the third millennium as early as in 1971.