Günter Dinhobl (Hrsg.): Sonderband 7. Eisenbahn/Kultur – Railway/Culture (2004)

I. Für eine Kulturgeschichte der Eisenbahn / Towards a cultural history of railways - Michael Cotte: Railways and Culture: An Introduction

Railways and Culture: An Introduction

tion difficulties served as a foundation for an exceptional pattern of technical innovations, such as the tubular boiler (1828). Today, the Saint-Etienne & Lyon remains almost unknown, even in France, but it very clearly featured both the modem railways as a technological system and the emergence of many social, economical and cultural industrial patterns out of England.'

Background of the St-Etienne Railway Projects: Transportation Context

The first ideas a for railway solution appeared with the very difficult question of commercial transportation for some advanced European regions after the peace of 1815. It was based upon a take-off in trade and material exchanges that underlined the drastic limits of traditional forms of transportation. These problems related to the rapid increase of transportation flow among the most dynamic regions. It also related to the goal of transport regularity, independent from weather and seasons. Clearly, the classical system of roads and canals had reached a bottleneck in structure as well as in use.

The French geography was not good for inland navigation, especially in South- Eastern and Central-Eastern regions, such as Lyon and Saint-Etienne. A canal junction was impossible between the two cities due to a mountain chain from north to south. In addition, the French administration tried to promote the completion of an ambitious national network of canals according to the law of 1821, combining designs by the corps of state engineers and private investments for the construction. For the 1820s and 1830s, commercial effect of these combination programs remained very limited.

In the Saint-Etienne region, roads remained badly maintained, both facing the rapid increase in coal haulage and the very low budgets for the French administration of “Ponts et Chaussées” (the Bridges and Roads Corp), following the Napoleon military defeat. In addition, some regions were porrly equipped. For instance, crossing the Rhone River by permanent bridges was only possible in Lyon (La Guillotière Bridge) and Pont-Saint-Esprit.* 2

' Saint-Etienne & Lyon Railway is mainly studied in: Gras, L-J.: Histoire des premiers chemins de fer français. Saint-Etienne 1924 ; P a y e n , Jacques : La machine locomotive en France. CNRS & PU Lyon 1988; Cotte, Michel: Le fonds d’archives Seguin, aux origines de la révolution industrielle en France. Privas, Archives départementales de l’Ardèche 1997; Cotte, Michel: Innovation et transfert de technologie, le cas des entreprises de Marc Seguin, 1815-1835. Lille 1998, 2 vol.

2 Marc Seguin was originally involved in the suspension bridge building for the Rhone Valley, see: Cotte: Le fonds d’archives Seguin; Cotte: Innovation et transfert de technologie.

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