France - Albertville - Bourg-Saint-Maurice line

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Was in France last week for work in an area close to the Italian alps having driven down from Lyon. the factory is in the French alps at a very small village called Notre-Dame-de-Brian.

The plant I visited may actually be the last destination of freight on the line (small freight voloumes and most went to road long ago) as it heads towards the line terminus Bourg-Saint-Maurice just before the Italian border and end of the line at a sky village that was the host for the 1992 winter Olympics. I think last time before the winter games were moved off the summer games year. So this station is rather large and receives winter rail traffic from as far away as Paris and Amsterdam.

Note Albertville station is a former junction station, now terminus where the line used to continue north to Anncey (now mostly a raIL trail), so the line from Lyon and the line from Bourg-Saint-Maurice actually arrive in parallel and must return the from the same direction to leave.

The line is serviced by local SNCF services and TGV from further away as stated above.

Of interest was the 25kVA OH nth of Albertville station is only single strand Light Rail for most of the time.

This route is extremely scenic, well serviced a few times a day so you can get off and explore some of the pretty small villages along the way in a return day trip from Albertville.

From Albertville you can return back towards Lyon to Chambrey and then north to Cluses via the very pretty lake side town of Annecy and then take the narrow gauge line to Chamonix (access to Mt Blanc cable car) and then onto the Swiss border where you change train not for gauge, but because the French trains use third rail but the Swiss you OH (although I think there maybe through trains now, not sure), then continue north to a junction with the Swiss main line, take the train towards Lake Geneva for town of Montreux and then ride the amazing miniture trains over a very large multi track layout.

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