A detailed history of the development of the rail network, the life of rail staff and railway trade unions in the Provence region of southern France from the early days of railways in the 1830s and 1840s to the opening of the LGV Méditerranée high speed line in 2001 when the book was published.
The book is well illustrated with original photos, drawings, documents and posters. It describes how the railway unions were organised, the various waves of strikes through the decades including those of 1968 and 1995, major infrastructure projects and developments, the role of the railways in the two world wars, and the involvement of the unions in the campaigns against the colonial wars such as that in Algeria in 1953. Towards the end there are pages of statistics for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur rail network as at 2001, giving information such as number of route km, number of SNCF employees, number of daily trains and number of passengers per year.
French text. Hardback. 248 pages. Over 500 photos.