Once upon a time, there was the white train, and its elder brother, the black train.
Much could be said about the black train… The most ancient among the rolling stock of the metre gauge network operated by the , which served the Toulouse area for several decades from Roguet station, it survived until the late 1940s (1), dedicated to serving local rural markets, puffing and wheezing along the hillsides and through the woodlands. I can still recall it through vivid childhood memories, stopped at Blajan-Nizors station, that hot, grubby, greasy beast. Its driver wore goggles, pushed back on his forehead, revealing two white eyes in the midst of a blackened face, a three dimensional
