The operation of CFDs

Administration

The head office and the offices of the Central Administration were initially located in Paris, 20, avenue de l'Opéra; it was later transferred to 5, rue Louis-le-Grand, and finally to 10, avenue de Friedland. It was still there in the 1980s. During the two wars, the offices of the Central Administration were evacuated to Saint-Jean-d'Angély on the Charente network.

From the start of operations, local departments were set up in the CFD centres. These included senior officers from the three services (EX, VB and MT). The head of operations was the Special Agent for the Single Track (A.S.V.U.) and all the other heads of service were placed under his authority.

The schedules

On each grid, the basic grid had three daily end-to-end R.A.R.s. Special trade fair and market trains as well as section trains were occasionally put into service. Regular trains were taken from series I, periodical trains from series 50. In some particularly important networks, dozens of sections were assigned to each line and 50 were added to all the numbers of periodical trains.

Subsequently, the 100 series was assigned to self-propelled trains and the 200 series to M.V. trains.

The staff

It was in the 1930s that the Company's staff reached its peak of 2,463, of which 357 were women. In 1981, the C.F.D. employed only 350 people in its design office, workshops and various railway and road activities.

Traffic

In the year 1932, the Company started 168,703 trains which travelled 4,837,854 km and carried 3,944,540 passengers and 947,328 tons of freight. These figures demonstrate the usefulness of such secondary networks, which carried a large amount of transport to their junctions with the major networks, thus contributing to their prosperity. In addition, they also provided local traffic which, although more modest, was nevertheless not negligible.

Signalling and train control

Signage was kept to a minimum. Initially, some departments required the installation of mobile discs at the entrance to the stations. Their lack of usefulness led to their replacement by fixed green discs, located 150 m from the entrance needles, to slow down convoys. They were, however, kept at junctions in the middle of the track. Squares protected the track shears of large networks and controlled the exit of large depots. These provisions, which were few in number, were found in particular on the Vivarais, Charentes and Indre-et-Loire networks.

Train control was regulated by observance of the train operating book and by the closed line principle; a red flag placed in the centre line of the track at each station was removed at the departure of convoys and replaced immediately afterwards. The changes of crossing points and the starting of additional trains were ordered only by the A.S.V.U. which confirmed them by means of telephone dispatches. A telephone omnibus line connected all stations and guarded P.N.'s. A direct line connected the terminus and the central station.

source : MTVS 1981-3