An 1860 photo - from a balloon

At the Saint Lazare railway station, you can at present find an exhibition about the history of the station. I have already covered the subject in a previous post, but without this “help”.

However, I found one surprising thing: a photo taken from the air (a balloon) in 1860 (!!) of the area where I live, not that far away from the Saint Lazare station. I tried to put a Google Earth view in a similar angle. The house where I live was already there in 1860, probably just built - the neighbour house is not yet there.

(As I already stated on a previous post, the Google photo seems to be a few years old.)

A new Paris park

Paris almost got the Olympic Summer Games 2012, but London won the fight!

The Paris plan included the creation of an Olympic Village like this to lodge the participants; the games would take place in different arenas inside and outside Paris and within a reasonable distance from the village. The space planned for the village has until now been occupied by a merchandise rail yard and some connected logistic activities.


Plans had to be revised. For the moment part of the space is transformed into a park. The park is called Parc Clichy Batignolles and is very close to where I live. Without any particular publicity, the gates to the park opened last Saturday and I entered as probably the third visitor.

The park is only partly finished and a lot of work remains for the coming weeks and months; a water basin, space for roller skating…and the grass, the flowers and the trees must grow. The park will later be made even bigger after the demolition of some surrounding buildings. In a few years it will be really nice! ... and Google Earth photos over Paris must be renewed!This is an opportunity to make a reference to the importance that rail had in this part of Paris: The Saint Lazare station – with the first French passenger railroad (1837) to Saint Germain (19 km) - is quite close and what was called “la Petite Ceinture” which made the tour of Paris (completed in 1869, now abandoned) also passed here. During the 19th century there was an important manufacturing of locomotives and wagons (Société de Construction des Batignolles)…

The defenders of local traditions would like not to forget the link to the rail. This weekend different manifestations took place explaining the need to do something in this respect. I show you some photos I took on Sunday from a street theatre play.One idea could be to leave some space in the new park for an outdoor railway museum.