The TGV La Poste were dedicated trainsets for high-speed freight and mail transportation by French railway company
SNCF
The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (; abbreviated as SNCF ; French for "National society of French railroads") is France's national state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the country's national rail traffic ...
on behalf of the French postal carrier
La Poste. The top speed of this
TGV Sud-Est
The SNCF TGV Sud-Est was a French high speed TGV train built by Alstom and Francorail-MTE and operated by SNCF, the French national railway company. A total of 111 trainsets were built between 1978 and 1988 for the first TGV service in France ...
derivate was , making them the fastest freight trains in the world. They were withdrawn in 2015.
Services
The trainsets were built by
Alstom
Alstom SA is a French multinational corporation, multinational rolling stock manufacturer operating worldwide in rail transport markets, active in the fields of passenger transportation, signalling, and locomotives, with products including the A ...
between 1978–1986. These
TGV
The TGV (french: Train à Grande Vitesse, "high-speed train"; previously french: TurboTrain à Grande Vitesse, label=none) is France's intercity high-speed rail service, operated by SNCF. SNCF worked on a high-speed rail network from 1966 to 19 ...
units are essentially
TGV Sud-Est
The SNCF TGV Sud-Est was a French high speed TGV train built by Alstom and Francorail-MTE and operated by SNCF, the French national railway company. A total of 111 trainsets were built between 1978 and 1988 for the first TGV service in France ...
trainsets that are modified for transporting mail. 5 half-trainsets were built, numbered 1-5. A further two, numbered 6 and 7, were converted from former TGV-SE trainset no. 38. Each half-trainset consisted of a power car and four intermediate-trailers.
In 2009,
La Poste reduced services from 8 to 6 daily round trips.
On 21 March 2012 a demonstration freight train ran to
London-St Pancras, but there was no follow-up.
In mid-2015, La Poste ended TGV postal services, shifting mail services to
swap bodies
A swap body, swop body, exchangeable container or interchangeable unit, is one of the types of standard freight containers for road and rail transport.
Based on and very similar to the more widespread shipping containers (ISO containers), swap b ...
instead as part of a major logistics restructuring and expansion which the trainsets were not capable of handling.
Additionally, the demand for fast overnight mail services has been decreasing in recent years. The final service was on 27 June 2015 between Cavaillon (
Marseilles
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
) and Charolais (Paris).
La Poste originally was seeking a buyer for the fleet,
however in December 2016 three trainsets were dismantled by SME (Société Métallurgique d'Épernay)
[Rapport de présentation 'Prestations de démantèlement de rames Tgv postal'. G Chan Liat (in French). 3 September 2016] leaving only a half spare trainset left.
Fleet details
See also
*
British Rail Class 325, postal EMUs used in Britain
*
ETR 500, in freight operation since October, 2018. Maximum speed is , average speed is .
References
Further reading
*
Poste, La
Non-passenger multiple units
Electric multiple units with locomotive-like power cars
Postal vehicles
{{France-rail-transport-stub
Alstom multiple units
1500 V DC multiple units of France
25 kV AC multiple units