What's Here:
TAG Light Rail System
SNCF Intercity Trains
Data:
GPS Coordinates: as needed
Phone A/C: 04
ZIP: 38000 (at the SNCF station)
Access by train/transit:
SNCF, TER, and TAG
The Scoop:
I choose the Grenoble system to do as my first venture
outside North America because it is the only system I have spent anytime
riding and photographing, way back in 2002 as part of a three week business
trip which included Toulouse and Aix-en-Provence. Even though I was
close, I never made it to Lyon or Marseille, darn-it. I did manage to
get chased by a tower operator in Toulouse, and narrowly missed getting
hauled in by the police while taking pictures on a viaduct in
Aix-en-Provence (scenes from the movie The
Transporter come to mind :-)
TAG stands for: Transports de l'agglomération grenobloise,
which is the transportation authority for Grenoble. The system comprises 5 tram, or light
rail lines, 149 bus lines, and a regional rail service, TER - all serving 49 communities
around Grenoble. The Wikipedia page says there are 8 stations for TER, but on the
TAG map PDF, only four are shown, hence, only four show up on my map.
From Railway-Technology: Grenoble, the capital city of the Isère département in the
Rhône-Alpes region in France, had a tram service until 1952. Like many French systems,
it went out of existence due to the high cost for required renewals when compared to
bus replacements, being perceived as an outmoded form of transport. When asked in 1983
whether they would like a modern tramway, voters were only narrowly in its favour.
Grenoble opened its first tramway in 1987 with an 8.8km (5.5 mile) line between
Fontaine La Poya and Grand Place. With the opening of Line D in October 2007,
the system had grown to four lines with a combined length of 34.2km (21.4 miles).
The Grenoble network is widely seen as an excellent example of marrying modern
technology with sympathetic urban renewal.
It has won particular praise for providing far greater access and independent
travel for those with impaired mobility through pioneering use of level access
to low floor vehicles.
Grenoble celebrated the opening of the initial 4.8km section of light rail Line
E on June 28th, 2014, with a music festival and two days of free travel across
the network. The first phase of Line E runs from an interchange with Line
A at Louise Michel in Grenoble city centre to Saint-Martin-le-Vinoux Town Hall
and has eight stations, including a park-and-ride station at Casamaures-Village.
Grenoble inaugurated the second phase of light rail Line E on July 13th, 2015
with the launch of commercial services on the 6.7km extension from Saint-Martin-
le-Vinoux Town Hall to Saint Égrève and Fontanil Cornillion. The 10-station
extension takes the total length of Line E to 11.5km and is expected to boost
ridership on the north-south line to nearly 45,000 passengers per day, with
trams operating at six-minute headways at peak times.
SNCF has a line that comes through, but it does not have the high high speed
TGV service running on it. For that, you need to go almost all the way
to Lyon by way of A48 and A43, to Grenay. On the south side of
the station, the right-of-way leaves/enters town on a built up stone
viaduct, making photos darn near impossible. The Grenoble yard is on
the north side of the station, but access is extremely limited, and I
wouldn't take a chance, especially if you don't speak French.
The light rail has a nice stop right in front of the main station.
Parking is (was) so-so, and a little further north of the station, there was
ample parking, don't know if it is still around or not. For signal
fans, the SNCF used to use white/purple dwarf signals to control shunting
moves in the yard - don't know if they still do or not.
One of the things we ALL take for granted is calling someone. If you live in "the
states", we have gotten used to the fact that most phone calls are now 10 digits,
regardless of where you live.... gone are the days of 7 digit phone calls,
this is due to the explosive growth of cellphones here and abroad. I
could go one further, and tell you that when I was young, many towns only
needed a 4 or 5 digit number to place local calls, if you were calling within the
same exchange! :-)
Here is a guide I found to help you calling someone while in France:
Disclaimers:
I love trains, and I love signals. I am not an expert. My webpages reflect what I find on the topic of the page. This is something I have fun with while
trying to help others.
Please Note: Since the main focus of my two websites is railroad signals, the railfan guides are oriented towards the signal fan being able to locate them.
For those of you into the modeling aspect of our hobby, my
indexa page has a list of almost everything railroad oriented
I can think of to provide you with at least a few pictures to help you detail your pike.
If this is a railfan page, every effort has been made to make sure that the information contained on this map and in this railfan guide is correct. Once in a while,
an error may creep in :-)
My philosophy: Pictures and maps are worth a thousand words, especially for railfanning. Text descriptions only get you so far, especially if you get lost or
disoriented. Take along good maps.... a GPS is OK to get somewhere, but maps are still better if you get lost! I belong to AAA, which allows you to get
local maps for free when you visit the local branches. ADC puts out a nice series of county maps for the Washington DC area, but their state maps do not have the
railroads on them. If you can find em, I like the National Geographic map book of the U.S..... good, clear, and concise graphics, and they do a really good job
of showing you where tourist type attractions are, although they too lack the railroads. Other notes about specific areas will show up on that page if known.
Aerial shots were taken from either Google or Bing Maps as noted. Screen captures are made
with Snagit, a Techsmith product... a great tool if you have never used it!
By the way, floobydust is a term I picked up 30-40 years ago from a National Semiconductor data book, and means miscellaneous
and/or other stuff.
Pictures and additional information is always needed if anyone feels inclined to take 'em, send 'em, and share 'em, or if you have something to add or correct.... credit
is always given! Please be NICE!!! Contact info is here
Beware: If used as a source, ANYTHING from Wikipedia must be treated as being possibly inaccurate, wrong, or not true.