This post covers another short-lived tramway which provided a service up the valley of l'Esteron from Pont Charles Albert over the River Var to Roquesteron, a distance of more than 20 kilometres.
This line was 26.5 Km long and connected villages in the Tinée valley to Nice to Digne line. Like other lines of the Tramways Alpes Maritimes (TAM), the electric current was single phase. The civil engineering works (bridges, tunnels) were executed by the Department.
The line was built in 1911 and operation started on 1st April 1912. Landslides affected the operation of the line in the early months. The original opening was delayed from January to April because of landslides and on 2nd April a further landslide affected several hundred metres of track and destroyed power lines.
The line ceased operations in 1931.
The available imagery from the time of the tramway is limited in extent and is supplemented by images from later dates.
The line from Le Pont de Gueydan north to Guillaumes followed the valley of the River Var and ran through the Gorges de Daluis.
Marc Andre Dubout, writing in French, says that the line was probably the moist daring of secondary line construction work with very steep gradients, numerous tunnels, two remarkable bridges. He comments that it is the most impressive tramway from a tourist perspective with 'unique viewpoints and singular landscapes'.
One of the bridges on this route has the distinction of being one of the earliest reinforced concrete arch structures in France.
Currently I am reading a book written in French about the tramways of Nice and the Cote d'Azur written by Jose Banuado. Sadly the book is only available in French. I have to use an internet based translation package to understand the book as my French is very limited.
This post is based on Jose Banuado's book and covers the period of the First World War.
It was not long before the tramways around Nice began an inexorable decline. The early 1930s saw the loss of many of the tram routes outside the city of Nice. Buses were the new thing as far as public transport was concerned. The car became gradually more important.
Further decline in the urban tramway network in Nice occurred from the late 1920s into the 1930s. Buses became politically more acceptable than the trams. ... This post continues my reflections based on a translation of the work of Jose Banaudo from French into English. ...
The 1930s through to the 1950s saw major changes in the urban environment. As elsewhere, the car began to dominate people understanding of progress. Other firms of transport, to a greater or lesser extent, took a secondary place. Independence, rather than interdependence, came to dominate political thinking. Strengthening democracy after the Second World War valued the perspective of the individual. By the end of the 1950s the place if the 'expert' in any debate was beginning to be challenged. No longer were people as willing to be told what was best for them. In a significant way, the car became a touchstone for that growing independence and self-confidence. The tram and the train began to be seen as part of the past rather than an important part of the future.
I have been exploring the history of the Metre-gauge Tramways in Nice through reading a french-language book about their history. To do so, I have had to use translation software as my French has not improved beyond O-level standard!
I have been seeing your excellent articles in many different forums, groups and websites from the UK but also from the US, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands for several years and now again.
I have enjoyed a lot reading, seeing and learning from your work and still do so it is time to say THANK YOU.
A return to Nice is in the offing and I have turned back to books by Jose Banaudo.
Jose Banaudo published a two volume set of books about the historic trams of Nice, “Nice au fil du Tram.”
This is the first of a series of articles based on the second volume. (Jose Banaudo; Nice au fil du Tram, Volume No. 2: Les Hommes, Les Techniques; Les Editions de Cabri, Breil-sur-Roya, France, 2005). The books were published as French language texts, quotations directly from the books have been translated with the assistance of ‘Google Lens’ and ‘Google Translate’.
The next article in a series following through the second volume of Jose Banaudo's two volume set of books about the historic trams of Nice, "Nice au fil du Tram."
Jose Banaudo writes, "As an extension of the Cannes Tramway route which linked Mandelieu, Cannes and Antibes, the TNL coastal line extended from Cap-d’Antibes to the Menton district of Garavan via Cagnes, Nice, Villefranche, Beaulieu , Monaco, Cap-Martin and Menton. These juxtaposed sections formed a continuous axis of 76 km of interurban tramway which served almost the entire coastline of the Alpes-Maritimes, from the Emite of the Var department to the Italian border.”
The linked article is the first looking at this coastal (littoral) route and looks at the length between Nice and Cap d'Antibes.
La Ligne du Littoral et ses Antennes, First Generation Electric Tramways – Nice-Monte Carlo (Chemins de Fer de Provence/Alpes-Maritimes No. 91) …
The line between Nice and Monte Carlo opened in a series of stages. First from Monaco to Place d’Armes in Monte Carlo on 14th May 1898; then from Place Massena in Nice to Villefranche, on 1st February 1900; Villefranche to Beaulieu on 3rd November 1900; TNL trams were permitted to run on Monaco’s tramways from 28th May 1903; and the remaining length, Beaulieu to Monaco Place d’Armes opened on 7th November 1903. Over the next few years some single track lengths were doubled.
Between Nice and Monte Carlo the TNL had two branch lines. The first ran from Pont St. Jean to St. Jean Cap Ferrat, the second ran up onto the rock in Monaco from the railway station. This article looks at those two lines:
