Gray's rail star
Historical
Gray's railway history began in the mid-19th century. At the time, Gray was a rich city due to the presence of numerous iron deposits on the surface, and its important port activity because it was the terminus of the navigable Saône. and this is how the Graylois and Haut-Saônois of all stripes had campaigned for a route from Dijon to Mulhouse passing through Gray and Vesoul, which would have been the most favorable from a structural and geographical point of view, but it was the route by the valley of the Doubs which will be finally retained with a branch towards Gray. With the construction of new lines, Gray found itself equipped with an international station with a five-branch star network with lines to Nancy, Chalon sur Saône, Besançon, Langres (Culmont-Chalindrey) and Troyes. The station also served as a border between the Eastern Railway and the Paris Railway to Lyon and the Mediterranean, which both wanted to share this heavy traffic and had significant steam depots. Thus, Gray was an important stop on the first line from Dijon to Nancy (by Auxonne and Vesoul) for a few decades, and still saw a significant flow of traffic between Switzerland, Italy and the Paris region until the 1930s. The axis (Chalon s / Saône) Auxonne-Vesoul in particular was very strategic from a military point of view, and in Gray, were built important military stores. However, after the war of 1870, it was decided to double the Dijon-Nancy line with a line further west, passing through Chalindrey and Neufchateau, because the line passing through Gray was declared too close to the German border. After the conflicts, this line thus lost its international character. Moreover, the Grayloise industry did not modernize like the rest of France, and after the Second World War, many structures were not rebuilt. In particular, the Voyageurs Building was partially destroyed, and the railway bridge over the Saône (for the line to Besançon) will never be permanently rebuilt. The line to Auxonne, lost its passenger traffic in 1938, and will be closed to traffic in stages from the 1950s. There was still a large traffic of goods on the remaining lines with grain trains, agricultural machinery and telephone poles among others, chartered by CFTA (Société Générale de Chemins de Fer et de Transports Automobiles), which also managed the movement of passenger trains Dijon-Vesoul (via Is Sur Tille) and towards Culmont-Chalindrey. The last passenger train left Gray in 1970 and at the end of the Steam on the Star in 1975 (and at the same time in France), a lot of freight traffic was reduced, eventually leaving only traffic commercial on short sections. But, the people of Grayl are asking for more trains, and many tourist and steam movements take place on the star. The use of steam until 1975 left the CFTAs the means to repair steam locos on behalf of tourists until 2014. We were therefore able to see gatherings of 141R, 231K or 231G in Gray. ten years and Until 1991, the Chalindrey line was the only access to Gray, when this line was abandoned in favor of the Auxonne line due to lack of maintenance. At the end of 2018, the last sections of the Is sur Tille and Vesoul lines used until now for the service of silos were abandoned to leave only the Auxonne line.
Local Railways
The local railways of Haute-Saône are a former secondary departmental metric gauge railway network, operated by the Compagnie Générale des Chemins de fer vicinaux (CFV), which in 1888 succeeded the Compagnie du Chemin de fer de Gray à Gy, concessionaire of the homonymous line since 1871, but then bankrupt. Nearly 470 km long in the Haute-Saône department, the network also extended into the neighboring departments of Jura, Doubs and Vosges , bringing its total length to over 520 km.
Composed from 1911 of a single network, serving the whole of the department, this network completed the rail service provided by the "big companies", the East and the PLM. Apart from the Jura section serving Dole, which closed at the end of 1933, the network saw its last trains circulating in 1938, a victim of frantic competition from road transport during the interwar period.
Freight services
At present, grain silos are the essential customers of traffic.The track has just been recently renovated as far as Villers les Pots. In addition, Socorail operates its workshops at the location of the CFTA steam depot (older the company of the EST).
The line from Gray to Villers les Pots The line is currently operated for freight with the status of VUTR Single track with restricted traffic.
The line from Gray to Vesoul The line between Gray and Vesoul has been completely closed to operation since October 2018. Note in Vaivre, the operation of a vélorail over several kilometers.
Future projects A first step could consist in re-establishing the connection to Villers les Pots avoiding going as far as Dole to reach Dijon.