Opening of the Suite Rapide site in Château-Thierry

Fast Renewal Worksite in Hauts-de-France

Five weeks of Suite Rapide for the renewal of Line 70 000 between Château-Thierry and Dormans stations. The fourth fast site of 2024 by GCF-Transalp Renouvellement will start work on August 19 to renovate the railway that, following the wide bends of the Marne River, connects the French regions of Hauts-de-France and Grand Est.

The "main players" of the site, the P95 renewal train and the C75-2C ballast cleaners, are currently finding their new base in the Fagnières yard, after successfully completing the site launched on April 2 in Chartres: 68,785 meters of track renewed - five days ahead of schedule - and 68,728 meters of track rehabilitated. "In this case," explains Sabino Carbone of GCF's French Management, "the ballast cleaner finished its commitment two days late due to the impact of sabotage carried out on the railways at the gates of Paris in the early days of the Olympics." A malicious event that forced SNCF to divert passenger train traffic onto the 420 000 Paris-Montparnasse - Brest line, along which, between the stations of Chartres and Le Mans, the GCF-Transalp Suite Rapide was indeed operational, inevitably slowing down the work.

The new Suite Rapide site will take over track 2 of line 70 000 from PK 116+000 to PK 95+400. The main works, renewal, and refurbishment, will take place from week 34 to week 39. Finishing work will follow until week 43.

It is planned to work on 6,704 meters in RVB mode (track and ballast renewal) and 31,335 meters in RB + RT mode (ballast and sleeper renewal) without replacing the existing rails, as they are still considered to be performing well.

The site will operate during daylight hours with simultaneous suspension of rail traffic on both tracks. It will affect the municipalities of Étampes-sur-Marne, Chierry, Blesmes, Fossoy, Mézy-Moulins, Courtemont-Varennes, Reuilly-Sauvigny, Passy-sur-Marne, Courthiézy, Trélou-sur-Marne, and Dormans along the section under construction. In Fagnières, the logistics site will be used for storing ballast, rails, and sleepers, old and new, as well as for maintaining renewal and refurbishment trains, locomotives, and "minor" machinery.

Meanwhile, the P95 work train and the C75 ballast cleaner, which have operated in recent months to renew the historic "Ligne des Horlogers", the historic mountain line that, in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, has connected Besançon to La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland since 1884 (see news here), are en route to their new destinations. Specifically, the P95 renewal train, which returned to the Hors Suite Bourges-Montluçon site in June to complete the track renewal in the final section of the Bourges side after a maintenance stop in Montluçon, is now on its way to Paris, where, from September, it will work on the renewal of a 6 km section at the "Zone Dense" ETF site.

As for the C75 ballast cleaner, after finishing the Horlogers site, it headed to the south-central area of the Massif Central, in Saint Flour, to start rehabilitation work on another Hors Suite site in the Aubrac national park, which is expected to be completed by early September.

Below is a suggestive video of the site along the Ligne des Horlogers, created by SNCF..

{ampz:ampzshortcode}