LANGUEDOC & PROVENCE SUN

The author :

Chris Elliott first started his working career with Inghams, the London based holiday company which specialised in Austria. Chris worked for four years both in their ticket department and as a courier travelling every winter weekend in their special trains from London to Calais across France to Bale and on into Austria. He spent most of his time working in the restaurant cars of Wagons Lits, learning the skills of serving in a moving train.

The two years of his military service was spent on the Longmoor Military Railway as an instructor in the Movement Control School. After this, and following a short period in the Metropolitan police, then managing a flower shop, he joined the family business and rose to become Chairman.

After taking a forced retirement, he arrived in Pézenas at the end of 1990. Since then, he has had three retirement jobs, assisting in a Pézenas Agent Immobilier, helping his partner to set up and run gîtes at the Chateau de Colombières sur Orb, and in his spare time writing the occasional book. This is his third book, and the second on transport. The fourth? Well, he has an idea, so wait and see!

Chris spends his time between his work based in the village of Magalas and the Château de Colombières sur Orb. He is also an active member and organiser of ‘Slow Food’, the movement which promotes traditional methods of food production, cooking and eating.

The book : The lost railway lines of l’Hérault, a brief history and guide to the railway lines of l’Hérault long departed

For the many newcomers to the Département of l’Hérault in the Languedoc Roussillon region in the South of France, the way people lived, travelled and moved their wine and agricultural produce in the late 1800s and the early 1900s is very much a mystery.

For those who walk in what can only be described as one of the most beautiful regions of France, there is much to be discovered. Hidden in the countryside are traces of the old railways. In suggesting where to find the long lost railways, this book sets out to provide the first few clues as to how the train impacted on life over the past 150 years.

Many residents of l’Hérault whose families have lived in the Département for over a 100 years will remember the accounts and stories related to them by grandparents about their way of life, and how they travelled by the Intérêt Local, the steam trains, and the Michelines. If the book jogs a memory or two, and provides yet more tales and anecdotes of a world very different from ours today, it will have achieved its aim.

This is a tale of the former railway lines and the trains that crossed our Département. It is also a tribute to the many hundreds of men and women who gave long service to the railway. So read on . . .