Along the cliffs of the Dordogne: Martel’s steam train

Ride along the high cliffs of the Dordogne valley as we explore the history of the Truffle Train: le Chemin de Fer Touristique du Haut-Quercy

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🔓Informational and historical sources:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin_de_fer_touristique_du_Haut_Quercy
http://chemins.de.traverses.free.fr/Sarlat-St-Denis/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle
http://www.lacorreze.com/documents/les_4_vicomtes.htm
https://passion-aquitaine.ouest-france.fr/train-martel-dordogne/

🎥Video credits:

📸Photo credits:
Public Domain / Wikipedia

🔧Chapters
00:00 – 02:04 Introduction and Trivia Question
02:04 – 06:35 The History of the Martel Line
06:36 – 14:33 Origins of the Association CFTHQ
14:33 – 17:14 Let’s go for a ride!
17:14 – 20:00 Conclusion

🎼Music tracks:
Espresso Loop by Avanti
Every Day (Jazz Version) by Lukrembo
All In by Moavii
At Ease by Hazelwood
Source: https://freetouse.com/music
Interval Quartet
Marsac, Charente

🍎This video is for educational and informational purposes. All rights reserved.
Content published with the consent of those filmed, under public domain, fair use and creative commons 3.0 licenses. © GACS 2025

#railway #france #history

The picturesque cliffs and valleys of the Dordogne river in the Lot department of south-central France: the home of a heritage railway that continues to run daily excursions of steam power. A dedicated and hard-working team has run a successful steam railroad here for nearly 30 years. Using coal as mainline fuel, the three operational locomotives can shuttle 2 500 tourists per day up the steep grade of the river valley, along an impressively engineered stretch of track, to the town of Martel. It crosses a viaduct running up a grade of over 2% built at a high cost from 1880 to 1884. Travel along with me today as we discover the history and current-day operations of this incredible success story. For today’s trivia question:
What does the steam locomotive designation 0-8-0 stand for? And if you know that answer, what is its European equivalent? Listen carefully throughout the video, and you might just find the answer. If not, I’ll explain at the end. Hi, welcome to this episode of Touring Backroads France. we’re in the town of Martel today, in the Lot department, looking at a heritage railway association which is called le Chemin de Fer Touristique du Haut Quercy also known as the Truffle Train. This heritage association runs three different steam locomotives through the high season in the summer. They do a lot of work to keep them maintained and have acquired them successively since 1997. Last year they had over 120 000 visitors to the site. Today I’m going to talk with some of the members of the association, we’ll look at what they do and how they got started, as well as what they’re projecting to do in the future. One of the things they’re looking into right now is what you see behind me here, a “vélorail” which they use as as peddle bike to go down the three miles of track that are behind me here. So I hope you enjoy this episode! If you like the content, make sure to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE Come with me today as we visit the heritage association! The popularity of this heritage line could very easily have been different a different story. Initially Martel was not slated to be added to the rail network, as local geographer and historian Paul Claval explained: The first railway line was turned down here when it was built during the 1860s and ran through Saint-Denis-près-Martel which is 3 miles away, but didn’t benefit Martel. Despite the town’s important role in commerce and trade, the railroad wouldn’t arrive until 1880, when a western extension from Saint-Denis-près-Martel was planned to extend into the Dordogne, through Sarlat-la-Canéda permitting a direct east-west route to the major cities of Bordeaux and Lyon. The second line, the one that runs through Martel was a line running from Bordeaux to Aurillac and beyond that (to the east) the col de Laurent which allows access into the Cantal for which the original ambition was to complete a line from Bordeaux to Geneva (Switzerland). Clearly the terrain here would require investment and ingenuity. Rugged terrain made numerous tunnels and viaducts a necessity. At the time, there was money for the construction, owing to the important export market for products such as wine, lavender and livestock. While those products dominated the freight rosters, one local item would outshine them all: Truffles. Le Truffadou, or the Truffle Train as it was known, would make its calling stop in Martel. The courtiers for truffles and those working for companies that transformed the truffles arrived by train in the morning, and went around to all the cafés. Between 9 AM and 4 PM nothing happened. People were just informing themselves. Then the transactions would start. Within an hour, everything was sold. So as to allow the truffles to be shipped on the 6 PM train, and so “Le Truffadou.” From 1890 until 1930, Martel would dominate the truffle export market, being the major trading center for the 2 500 tons sold annually during that period. For comparison, today’s market is less than 100 tons per year, with prices significantly higher. Taxes and tariffs have become a major factor in black-market sales, making the official production numbers hard to estimate, but they are considerably lower than at the turn of the 19th century. In my documentary about the town of Martel, I’ll go into some of the reasons why. The line was scrapped for its steel during the First World War in 1917 then rebuilt with American rails in 1919. They remain in place until this day. After Sarlat became the terminus on the western end of the line, the increasingly segmented portions along with the general decline in secondary rail lines spelled the end of the Truffle Train. In 1980, the section of the line from Souillac to Saint-Denis-près-Martel was abandoned, the rails left to become overgrown and reclaimed by nature. A few kilometers have since been removed, between Souillac and west of Baladou. There were proposals made to dynamite the Bramefond viaduct, measuring 300 meters long and over 40 meters high, around the time of the construction of the A20 toll road which crosses the valley alongside it. While the construction destroyed part of the right-of-way, there is apparently an agreement that the privately-owned highway would need to build an underpass should the railroad be put back in use. Fortunately, the viaduct was left to stand and dominate the landscape around it, an impressive piece of 19th century engineering. One can speculate why anyone would want to have it destroyed. In 1991, the civil engineer Philippe Coudeville along with local residents, created an association to bring the line back to life. After six years of paperwork, meetings, certifications, worker training, planning and funding, the portion of the line from Martel to Saint-Denis-près-Martel was acquired. Steam operations could finally begin. From these humble beginnings a major tourist stop has now come to life in the former freight house, welcoming tens of thousands of people from across the world every season. Running multiple steam locomotives requires heavy daily maintenance, with wood and coal used as fuel and thousands of liters of water converted to steam, obtained from the Dordogne river basin. Water, heat and steam create a corrosive environment for the metal parts which need regular replacement and repair. After having talked with several of the mechanics on duty at the workshop, I sat down to talk with Technical Director Alban Lacarrière at the station coffeeshop. Hello, Alban Lacarrière, employee at the Haut Quercy Train since 2007 when I was hired on the general work crew as a mechanic, and have been the general technical director since 2017 managing the technical aspects of the locomotives and workshop as well as line maintenance, which we also do, planning and coordinating the teams. So while we’re speaking about this line, it has sort of a particular story? Do you want to say a few things about the history of this line? Our portion of the line was built between 1881 and 1882 when there was a need to link Bordeaux and Aurillac with an east-west connection One way the wood was shipped down to Bordeaux for the barrels used in wine-making and the other way salt was shipped for meats and other uses, in order to compete with the Gabares (river boats) at the time. How do truffles figure in with all of this? Truffles were more to do with Martel, the largest truffle market in the region. That came a bit later. The initial construction was to compete with river traffic. When they built a line through this part of France, what were the major challenges? You have to go from the Causse (highlands) down into the valley when you’re on the plateau, you have to dig cuts, tunnel through. We have a large curved tunnel that exits on the cliff’s edge. So the line had to be built up to gain access the valley with viaducts and a lot of manual labor, up to 2 000 workers were employed on the line at once. About the locomotive roster, you have three of them here? Three in service. Two on static display, and one more for parts, or maybe for future restoration. At the start, the association began running trains here in 1997 with one steam locomotive starting the first year with steam, and the 0-8-0 (040) today which was acquired in 2010 and has run every season from 2013 to today. And for the rest of the rolling stock, we can call it … material what do you think you’ll do with it? Will it stay on static display? Any thoughts? It’s a lot of work to maintain. That’s the concern, we’re starting to have a lot of material. We can’t maintain it all. So now I think we’ve topped out on capacity. But that’s what allowed us to develop our association since the start. I had another question about the line in the other direction: towards Souillac, some of the line is still in place. Is it possible that it could be used again, or is that too expensive? I believe you own it? – We have half of it. – Half. There are six kilometers, we have three kilometers. And the remaining three, we’re supposed to sign on the purchase next month. So we’re planning peddle-bike service, complete renovation of the line. First the vélorail, then the goal is to run trains. We got concrete and steel ties from a SNCF work site not far from here We got 11 500 ties with the right anchors for our rails so that’s our next project that should start before next year. The rails you have currently are from the USA, if I’m not mistaken? Yes, they’re “type B” rails, not very common, difficult to source, and we were lucky to get the ones that were removed from the rest of the line. We’re the third largest tourist site in the department, there’s the Padirac cave, Rocamadour, although it’s difficult to count how many there, first is Padirac, the second is the Pont Valentré (Cahors) and we’re third, with around 120 000 passengers per year or rather six months, which is when we operate, so we really bring a lot of people to Martel plus the employees and seasonal work with up to 20 employed in July and August. Why steam locomotives? It’s an atypical product. Mid-season we do diesel and steam trains, the steam trains are always full it’s really the calling card of the association. That’s what gives us our strength, I think. -Thanks so much Alban for giving your time. -You’re welcome. Best of luck to you all. Thank you as well, best of luck! In the high season, the routine and work schedule here can be pretty intense. With between four and eight scheduled excursions per day, the station is a bustling and busy place. The team starts the morning with routine checks and part maintenance, moving the steam engines out of the workshop with a diesel assist. On this locomotive the firebox is lit up with wood. Once the temperature is high enough, coal then replaces the wood for a more efficient burn. High-grade coal is sourced outside of France, and even for a short distance the quantities burned can be surprising: Here’s a quick look at the numbers: for a standard excursion, the steam locomotives here use around 250 kilograms of coal, or over 500 pounds. Water usage equals 1 500 liters, or 400 US gallons. These of course are variable depending on the locomotive used and other factors. On the day of my visit, the primary tractive power was from a 0-8-0, called a 0-40 in French. This means it has four tractive wheels in the center on each side. Built in 1927 in Alsace, it still has its original construction plaque. Two other steam locomotives are in operation currently, both Polish-built and much more recent. One is a 0-6-0 configuration called a 0-30 Ferrum or “Marine” built in 1956. The third is a 0-8-0 Slask from Chrzanów, Poland, built in 1963 and acquired in Belgium in 2014. Alongside the platforms sits an impressive German-built BR50, featuring 1930s technology and built in 1961. It’s not operational given the maintenance requirements and operational costs involved. It’s presence on-site is nonetheless a point of interest. Let’s go for a ride! The excursion ride lasts about an hour and fifteen minutes. It’s advisable to arrive early. Where you choose to sit along the open-air coaches will determine your proximity to the locomotive, including the smoke and noise that it produces. It’s important to be aware of this if you’re riding with small children or are sensitive to the air quality, particularly in the tunnels. Arriving early will give you better seating options. The ride stops twice along the route, once at the cliffside scenic overlook of the Dordogne river valley, at a height of eighty meters, or around 250 feet. On the return trip, there’s a whistle stop at the top of the Courtils viaduct, where refreshments can be purchased. Initially the journey seems slow, as the locomotive is used to regulate the train’s speed downhill. On the way back up, the full power of the locomotive is put on display as it pulls passengers up the grade with ease. It then coasts honorably back into the historic town of Martel, with a splendid view of the medieval town center and a number of fantastic shops and restaurants just a short walk from the station. The French railway SNCF runs regular passenger service out of Saint-Denis-près-Martel on two lines that run north, south and east. There’s no connection between the mainline service and heritage line, although perhaps one day if the red tape were made easier, this could become a possibility. Extending west from Martel for another few miles, the track is expected to become a vélorail, or peddle-bike service. Overgrowth and underbrush would need to be removed, and the track refurbished to support maintenance work. As of today, plans and agreements are in the works for next season. The answer to today’s trivia questions: 0-8-0 represents the wheel arrangement of a locomotive with four tractive wheels in the center on each side. The first 0 represents no leading wheels, and last 0 means no trailing wheels. This is from the Whyte notation system which began use in the early 1900s in the United States and the United Kingdom, to standardize locomotive notation and record-keeping. In Europe and most of the world, the international UIC system is used. It’s a more complex and more complete notation method. In France, a 0-8-0 would be noted as a 0-4-0, with only the wheels on one side being counted. For more information and sources included in the video, take a look at the references in the description below. If you learned something new today, make sure to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE. Check out my other playlists about the history of back roads places in France, the Knights Templar, the Roman Empire, The French Resistance and a lot more. Until next time, merci et au revoir! Subtitles, translations and video production: Alexander Schugt / GACS © 2025