PLM 5 ABef carriage

This bogie carriage, together with its twin sister PLM 4, has a very unusual history.

It was part of a series of 10 built in 1906 by the Decauville company for the Orange to Buis-les-Baronnies meter gauge line in south-eastern France, which was operated at the time by the PLM (Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée) mainline company, then by the SNCF.

When the line closed, in 1952, it was covered by a photographic feature article in the famous French weekly “Paris-Match”, an exceptional event for an old-fasioned local railway about to disappear.

Two carriages, N° 4 and 5, were preserved from scrap, but both lost their bogies.  They were bought by the headmistress of a school for lightly handicapped children, transferred near Romans in Isère, and converted into… classrooms! The first pupils attended their courses there in 1955. In 1962, tiled roofs were installed above the carriages and contributed significantly to protecting them from the weather. These unusual classrooms operated for 25 years and closed in 1981.

Sheltered on private land, unknown to most railway enthusiasts, the two carriages slumbered until 1999, when the CFBS contacted their owners with a purchase offer.
The deal was concluded in April that year and both carriages were transferred to Saint Valery sur Somme. It must be noted that despite being converted into classrooms, the original seats and oil lamps had been carefully dismantled and preserved by the first owner. This eased restoration work considerably, and the carriage was returned to service in 2002.

During this work, a great many school items were discovered inside the wooden sides of the carriage: pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, but also exercise books, drawings and texts very representative of the 1950s and 1960s…

BCf carriage 101 known as « Verneuil »

Classée Monument Historique

This 4-wheeler carriage is both the smallest and the oldest in service on the CFBS. It was built in 1894 by the Blanc-Misseron company for the Voies Ferrées d’Intérêt Local (VFIL) network of the Oise, in northern France. It has 32 seats. With its very short wheelbase, it is typical of the type of lightweight passenger rolling stock which was widespread on many secondary railways in the early years of their operation, between 1880 and 1900.

Like several steam locomotives of the CFBS, this carriage was initially preserved for a planned secondary railway museum at Verneuil (Marne), hence its nickname. This project having failed, the carriage was transferred to the CFBS in 1971 and ran in the very first commercial train operated by the preservation society, on 4^th July 1971.

Carriage N°101 was listed as a technical heritage item in 1993. Except when it underwent extensive restoration work, during the 1997/1998 winter, it has run continuously on the CFBS for more than 45 years.