Railway line:
The main railway line runs from Marseille and east to Ventimiglia, the border station to Italy. The line is doubletracked and electrified with 25 kV 50 Hz. The line continues east in Italy under italian 3 kV DC.
Passenger trains:
All passenger trains are operated by SNCF, the national railway company. Regional trains are called TER and normally consists of class Z 23500 and Z 26500 train sets, but some of the TER trains are locohauled trains consisting of a class BB 25500 locomotive and RRR (Rame réversible régionale) or RIO (Rame inox omnibus) sets in push-pull operation.
Faster TER services with fewer stops are called IC TER and are normally tradional locohauled trains.
Long-distance passenger trains are mostly TGV-trains of types TGV Réseau and TGV Duplex. Besides the TGV trains a few Téoz trains is operated with class BB 22200 hauling Corail cars.
Freight trains:
Freight trains are rare on this line, even though I did quite a lot of railfanning, I only saw one freight train, this was operated by a class 66.
Photography:
Before travelling, I was a bit concerned about whether I would get into trouble photographing trains. I had read about situations, where people taking pictures of trains have been arrested by the police. But I had no trouble photographing trains at all, no one said anything, even though railway police often was present at Nice Ville.
A totally other issue was the strong Mediterranean sun, around noon this resulted in pictures with very high contrast. So the best time to photograph trains are morning and evening.
- the rest of the pictures are placed under corresponding country and class
More to come....
SNCF BB 26138 in Nice Ville with train no. 18 Nice - Moskow on September 26, 2010 (opens in new window)
SNCF BB 26054 in Nice Ville on September 30, 2010 (opens in new window)
