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Concept
Chemins de fer du Midi
Summary
The Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi ( (). CF du Midi), also known in English as the Midi or Southern Railway, was an early French railway company which operated a network of routes in the southwest of the country, chiefly in the area between its main line – which ran from Bordeaux, close to the Atlantic coast, to Sète on the Mediterranean – and the Pyrenees.
The company was established by the Pereire brothers, who thus broke the virtual monopoly held in France by James Rothschild on the slow-paced railway projects taking place in the area of Paris during the 1840s and 1850s. The Rothschild branch of Paris responded by strengthening its grip on the sector with an alliance to the industrialist Talabot. The Pereires in turn founded their financial company Crédit Mobilier.
In 1934 the company was merged with the Chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans to become part of the Chemins de fer de Paris à Orléans et du Midi (PO-Midi).
In 1856, the Midi completed its rail line from Bordeaux to Toulouse. In 1857, it continued on from Toulouse through Narbonne to Sète. This put it in competition with the Canal du Midi, and on 28 May 1858 the railway took over the lease of the canal.
In 1909, the Compagnie du Midi launched a vast program of electrification of its lines under the impetus of the engineer Jean-Raoul Paul (1869-1960). It was a huge challenge for the time because it went far beyond the scope of railway operations alone. It was necessary to build infrastructure such as dams, power plants and distribution systems.
The company was far from coal production centres, so it was hard to get the fuel required for steam traction, and some coal was even imported from England. The proximity of the Pyrenees made hydropower generation possible and this favoured electrification. The shortage of coal during the war of 1914-1918, and especially its prohibitive cost after the war, provided further impetus for electrification. After investigations in Switzerland and Germany, a system using alternating current (AC) at 12 kV and 162⁄3 Hz was chosen for economic reasons.
Official source
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