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

Michael Cotte

Railway projects in the Saint-Etienne region was boosted by a major bottleneck in the coal transport from the Loire coalfield to the surrounding economic regions: the Nivernais ironworks in the north-west, the Rhone Valley and Lyon in the east, and the Mediterranean regions in the south. This central-eastern French region was very important for trade. Lyon was the first world site for the production of silk in the 1820s; and it was a major commercial centre in the North - South French and European trade by the Rhone - Saone valley, from Burgundy to the Mediterranean Sea. It also had merging heavy industry using coal: glass industry, copper industry, cast-ironworks, early attempts at the blast furnace etc.

Two major French rivers were not so far from the coalfield: the Loire around 15- 20 km away and the Rhone only 45 km away. But the major difficulties lay in the hilly country within notable altitude differences. A canal was carried out at the end of 18th century from Rive-de-Gier, at the eastern boundary of the coalfield, to Givors on the Rhone River side. High slopes did not allow digging a canal up to the main coalfield.

Figure from: Cotte, Michel: Aux origines de la révolution industrielle en France 1790-1860. Privas 1997, p. 121.

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