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Rail cuts: locals hold up the Paris express |
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Monday, 04 February 2008 |
Every week, a small group of English residents and a much larger number of French residents stage a demonstration at the railway station at Saint-Sébastien, in the Creuse (Limousin). They are protesting against recent cuts in SNCF services at the station, which is on the main Toulouse-Paris line. They fear that SNCF’s real plan is to close the station altogether.
Every Saturday at 2pm, the group, under the aegis of the Committee for the Defence of the Station at Saint-Sébastien (CODEGASS), assembles, usually with a dozen or so local maires. They then descend to the track and block the Paris express, one of the services that has been cut. The train arrives and crawls up to the group, stopping a few feet away and sounding its horn. The train is held for 15 minutes and then released. From the end of January, the gendarmerie has decided that standing on the track is unsafe, but also that it would be unsafe for the train not to stop, so the protest continues on the platform, with the train still stopping.
Commented committee member and local resident Rodney Sabine: "The English know only too well the damage that is done to villages when the railway station is closed. It has happened so often in the UK. At a time of climate change, SNCF should be encouraging local services, not reducing them. Anyone who wants to support us is welcome.”
Further information can be obtained from www.codegass.free.fr
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