18 May 1982. The French Railways Museum welcomed its millionth visitor. The lucky guest was received by Jean-Mathis Horrenberger and asked to sign the visitors’ book of the institution.
The final
museum
“We now have to finish the construction of building B, which will house a restaurant for 250, offices, a reception hall and the guard’s dwelling, and that of building C, designed for the Firefighters’ Museum. These two buildings will be complete at the end of the spring of 1977, which means that we can plan the official inauguration of the Technical Museums of Mulhouse Dornach for the following autumn.”
– Jean-Mathis Horrenberger, note on the year 1976 of the French Railways Museum, document stored at the Cité du Train
On 19 June 1976 at 10 am, almost five years to day since the opening of the temporary museum in Mulhouse North, the final museum opened its doors in Dornach. Five years were sufficient for restoring more machines, moving them, building the new building and publicising the French Railways Museum for the ever larger number of visitors. Looking back, the half roundhouse appears like a museum laboratory, where the collection, and more importantly its organisation, were tried out. While the last elements of rolling stock travelled to their final home, Jean-Mathis Horrenberger and Michel Doerr were preparing the inauguration, scheduled a few weeks later. In 1978, visitors looking at the locomotive 232 U 1 were startled by the sound track now in place, in sync with the movement of the coupling rods. The machine was ready to “start”.
From one station
to another
A few months after the opening of the Museum in its final site, Paris paid tribute to the railways. Bastille station, disused since 1984, was the venue of the first model train exhibition organised by SNCF. Behind the scenes, the company also helped promote the museum in Mulhouse. At the end of 1976, there was an early exchange of views between Michel Doerr and the external relations department of the railways operator. The planned project may appear surprising to us now. Passengers on major train lines were given several millions of crepe paper napkins decorated with a slogan promoting the museum. In 1977, the museum was however alerted: the napkins were “difficult to grasp” and would fall “accidentally”. Their folding design was revised, as were the dispensers. Anecdotal as it may seem, this episode is another reminder of the importance given to promoting the museum, including in stations across the land.
Artistic tablecloths
Advertising paper napkins are not the only objects to be found in the museum. Others, just as unexpected and unique, reveal a sensitive, enlightened and amusing world: that of the drawings on paper by Michel Doerr. As those who knew him personally were well aware, the author of Esthétique de la locomotive à vapeur (1971) was in the habit of doodling on white squares of paper, cloth and even tablecloths of hotels and restaurants. The drawings, always signed MD, showed station masters, boats, cars, and above all the passion of the first director for British railways. Some of his sketches were used to illustrate the official menus of seminars and board meetings. Saddle of lamb Crampton and Vacherin Golden Arrow were thus some of the dishes that delighted railways enthusiasts.
The Grand-Duke
of Luxembourg
On 20 November 1980, the French Railways Museum received a visit by the Grand-Duke of Luxembourg. In the salon carriage no 10 AL, called the “Grand-Duchess”, Jean of Luxembourg signed the visitors’ book of the museum in the presence of political figures from Luxembourg and France. In his memoirs, Jean-Mathis Horrenberger pointed out that this was the first time the Museum received a current Chief of State. At the end of the day, the Grand-Duke boarded a TGV along with Jacques Pélissier, Chairman of SNCF. The high-speed train was being trialled between Mulhouse and Strasbourg.
Bugatti
and the TGV
A small box containing slides. And on those transparent slides, two pieces of equipment of legend: the TGV and the Bugatti railcar. In the background, the workshop in Bischheim. The year was 1981. It was the second anniversary of the French Railways Museum, and also the inauguration of the TGV and the centenary of the birth of Ettore Bugatti.
That French-Italian sculptor was one of the greatest manufacturers of his time. In 1909, after experience gained principally at De Dietrich, he set up his automobile plant in Molsheim, a town located to the southwest of Strasbourg. While the Royale was the icon of his industry, Bugatti was also very interested in the railways.
The presidential railcar, which stepped off the production lines in 1933, is a sign of that interest. It was operated by SNCF till 1953, become a rolling laboratory until 1975 and was then selected to join the collection of the French Railways Museum.
After restoration work in the workshop of Bischheim, its carmine livery blended with TGV orange. That marriage of colours and forms, amplified by the granular appearance of the slides, in itself symbolises the development of design over the 20th century.
A presidential
helicopter
30 September 1982. In the late afternoon, a helicopter landed near the French Railways Museum. A few minutes later, after a brief exchange with representatives from the graphics arts firms of the area, its passenger went through the doors of the museum: it was President François Mitterrand. Accompanied by Charles Fieterman, Minister for Transport, and Jack Lang, Minister for Culture, the man who inaugurated the Paris-Lyon TGV a year earlier discovered the collection. A telephone connection with the Elysée palace, an inspection of the museum by security, the setting up of a medical station, the visit required flawless organisation, which Jean-Mathis Horrenberger remembered 15 years after the event.
“The path taken by the President during his tour of the Museum was defined almost to the metre, and I was to stick to it – which did not stop Mr Mitterrand, three days later, to take me twice by the arm and ask me to allow him a closer view of a locomotive that seemed to bring up childhood memories!”
– Jean-Mathis Horrenberger in Le Musée du Chemin de Fer : une utopie devenue réalité, 1997