Tramway de Pithiviers à Toury, Heritage railway in Loiret, France
The Tramway de Pithiviers à Toury is a 600 mm narrow-gauge railway that linked Pithiviers and Toury over 30.620 km, with about 50 km of branch lines serving sugar-beet refineries. The preserved line now runs 3.5 km from Pithiviers to Bellébat, where a steam locomotive with a number 5 plate hauls a green and cream carriage marked "TRAMWAY DE PITHIVIERS A TOURY".
The line was established in 1892 by the Société Decauville to move sugar beet between production areas and refineries. Steam locomotives handled both freight and passenger traffic for many decades along this route.
Locomotives carried names of villages the line served, such as Ormes, Outarville, Torville and Izy, and the numbering gave the driven axles first, so 3-5 was the fifth six-coupled engine. Sugar beet gave the line its purpose: about 50 km of sidings let growers pay to have a rail spur laid to their own farm.
The preserved line runs from the old depot and workshops in Pithiviers, now the Musée des Transports, along 3.5 km of roadside track to Ormes, plus a 0.5 km extension to Bellébat that moves the terminus off the busy road. The museum occupies the former depot buildings, where the collection of locomotives and carriages is displayed.
The TPT numbered its locomotives by driven axles then individual number: 3-5 is a Blanc-Misseron 0-6-0T of 1902, 5-3 an Orenstein & Koppel 0-10-0T of 1917. Several engines came from military or sugar-works stock, such as the ALCO 2-6-2T 3-23, later preserved in Britain as Mountaineer.
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