Passadoc Gazette - No 114

The weekly 114

The train

It was a revolution when the train appeared in our lives as rural or urban dwellers!

Because we used to travel on foot... By bicycle... If the wealthy rolled carriages, the humble moved in carts, the bourgeois in carriages, by car on horseback.

La Fontaine says:

In a way up, sandy, awkward,
And from all sides to the sun exposed,
Six strong horses were pulling a Coche.
Women, Moine, Old men, everything was down.
The coupler knew, blew, was returned.

And Alphonse Daudet writes:

– I had taken the diligence of Beaucaire, a good old patache that did not have a long way to go before being returned home, but which wanders all along the road, to make it look, at night, to arrive from a very far distance.

And now, in 1804, an English engineer – Richard Trevithick – presented an extraordinary machine: a steam locomotive* Who's moving at 4 km/h!
It would take long paragraphs to tell here the evolution of this towing machine, from the original to the present, evolution that will make us railway travellers. Just a few dates limited to hexagon:

– 1827. First railway line. It is only 21 km long and is used to transport coal extracted from the mines of Saint-Étienne.

– 1837. Opening of a first passenger line.

– 1952. A leap in time: the SNCF (created in 1938) gradually replaced steam engines with diesel locomotives.

– 1980. The electrification of the French railway lines is almost total

– 2007. The TGV (High Speed Train) reaches 574 km/h and becomes the fastest train in the world.

And some works inspired by the rail:

– The Human Beast, 17th volume of the Rougon-Macquart, by Émile Zola (1890) ... and superb film by Jean Renoir (1938).

– The East-Express Crime – Agatha Christie

– The Train, a film with Burt Lancaster,

– The arrival of a train at La Ciotat station (1896). If the spectators are impressed by the images of Louis Lumière, no one is panicked to the point of leaving the room screaming. Another legend to be twisted.

– And our own train... When's he coming?

There he is! It's the yellow train., « Unique in the world! » says the mayor of Font-Romeu. At 30 km/h, a fabulous trip to Catalan country. Watch out for the start!

* Petit cocorico Gallois to recall the work of Denis Papin (1647-1713).

Jeanne Monin
Research on various sites.

André Abbe

The staring on the screen of my TV, I learn that today there will be a TGV in three that will come from Paris to our home... and three ters out of five in service between Marseille and Nice.

This arithmetic railway reminds me of railway geometry.

In November 1997, in the desert of Mauritania, we stopped our Land Rover to see the longest train in the world carrying iron ore to a port on the ocean.

I have at the moment the vagrant mood, the nostalgia of the wide spaces massaille.

Claude Boyer
I crossed Mauritania ten years after you and I also stopped in Nouadhibou to see this endless ore train of 2.5 km, 15,000 tons, 210 wagons towed by four locos of 3,000 cv each... Impressive.

François Abbe
What is the power of a loco in France by comparison please? Like we have a pro, we enjoy it!

Claude Boyer
Depends on the loco, it runs between 2 and 3 000 cv, too. In France, a freight train is up to 750 m for about 1,500 tonnes. Cargo trains (fuel transports) can be towed by a UM (Multiple Unit) i.e. two locos and weigh up to 3,200 tonnes.
Before each departure and at each transformation in the train composition, brake tests are performed.

The Echoes of the Week
Rue de la Chance
Frédéric Mistral
Write Provencal
An exhibition. to visit
The Library of Passadoc
Participate in La Gazette!

Rue de la Chance

I learned this morning by waking up that the bets on the races had increased by 22% compared to last year.

Is this the sign that people have money to spend or that they lack money and that they rely on the chance to get it?

At races, luck is not the only issue; knowledge of horses, jockeys, coaches matters a lot. It happens to go to Cagnes for the sole pleasure of seeing the horses run in front of the sea.

Lucky... I remember walking through the street of Chance in Ouagadougou in 1982 that passed in front. The building of the National Lottery.

I don't know if there are other streets of Chance in French-speaking countries, if you know one, tell me where to find it!

André Abbe

Frédéric Mistral

25 March. It was the anniversary of the death of Frédéric Mistral who died in 1914.

At 74 (1904), our great poet received the Nobel Prize in Literature for Mirèio.

It is the only Nobel Prize awarded for a work written in the regional language.

Readable

Write the Provencal...

Write the Provencal... I recognize it, it's not simple!

There are several ways of writing the Provençal and all the other dialects of the language of Oc. Several times a year the question is asked. I'll try to be clear.

In the Middle Ages, troubadours, regardless of their region of origin, had adopted a very coherent common graphic system.

To write their language, the Portuguese had also adopted it and it is still used today.

Over the centuries that followed, each person wrote the language in his fashion, more or less distant from the graphic « classic » Troubadours.

In the middle of the 19th century, Joseph Roumanille invented a more phonetic, more accessible photograph for Francophones. This is the graphic Frédéric Mistral chose, called « Mistralian » or « felibrean » which adapts poorly to other dialects of Oc.

In the 20th century, the linguist Alibert drew up the « alibertin », « IEO » or « classic » which reproduces it by simplifying the graphic of troubadours. It's the one I chose.

There is a third graphic, used only by the Occitans of Italy called « Po graphic ».

For example, I present a photo taken 40 years ago at the entrance of the Vermenagna Valley, on the Italian side of the Tende Pass. I'm not sure about the graphic used on this panel!

André Abbe

Jean-Jacques Murat

« O Balm! O Clarim! O Regale! Miramant! O Patz of the natura mansa! What relanger de bonur e de pantai paradisen avètz dubert sus mon enfença« (Badia de Sant Michèu de Ferigolet 1839/41).

This is how Frédéric Mistral originally wrote.

It was after several years of exchange of letters, about spelling, with Roumanille, his 12-year-old elder whom he had known at Dupuy College in Avignon (1845/47), that Mistral capitulated on 9 January 1852.

« I'm converted to the Crousillat systhema! You're going to say that I'm a real girouette, a chameleon, the most versatile of men, more changing than fates and waves, that's how: alea jacta is. Ah! What a pity! What bitter regrets and for you and me! If you knew, now the headband has fallen. If you knew how ridiculous our spelling seems to me. You'd be amazed! Indeed, I ask you, what is the language which neither singular nor plural, and which can establish such equivocalities:
Ama: Love
Ama: loved
Ama: you like

It's mocking all the rules, it's trying to turn our beautiful tongue into a terrible patois incomprehensible to anyone other than the author. I cannot imagine what evil deity had made us so obtuse, so bounded, so obstinate in such a patho... «