The Railway Factory played such an important part in the last two hundred years of the life of Arles – an importance that is almost completely ignored by the site’s recent conversion in some sort of cultural Xanadu – that a potted history of the institution would not be out of place.

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For almost two thousand years Arles had provided ship building and repair facilities for the river trade that passed on its way to and from Lyon some two hundred and fifty kilometres to the north and beyond.  The new railways were destined to replace most of this trade. They had brought the hope of prosperity and progress throughout all Europe and the south of France was no exception although the hope came late, possibly because France was blessed with two great rivers that made access for trade into the hinterland so practical. The first rail line was inaugurated in France in 1827 and a slow development started.

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In 1848, a line between Avignon and Marseilles had been opened and Arles was the ideal halfway point for a factory to service the machinery and, indeed, to make the engines and rolling stock. Six hundred people had come to the opening party. Arles was again providing for the transport of goods and people and the future for the town looked as bright as at any time since they started to service the river traffic, which commenced in earnest after Julius Caesar had overcome his great rival Pompey at Pharsalus in 48BC. when Arles’ first great period of prosperity arrived.

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Centuries later but only four years after the optimistic opening of the factory, the first in a long line of shocks befell the Arles Railway Factory – L’Atelier SNCF. The Avignon to Marseilles Railway Company and the Lyon to Avignon Company merged. Arles was no longer in the middle of the line and the rot began to set in. Despite continued investment in the factory the next amalgamation, this time in 1857 between the Lyon to Marseilles line and the Paris to Lyon, put Arles even more out on a limb and over the next hundred years the important work gradually haemorrhaged away to more central or convenient places like Avignon or Ouillon near Lyon, which actually was, of course, halfway between the extremities of the new grand ligne that connected Paris with Marseille.

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But for a time, L’Atelier actually made trains. In a large complex of buildings, offices, stores, specialist workshops for woodwork, leather upholstery, wheel balancing, testing and quality control stood two huge halls; Le Chaudonnerie given over to fitting and testing of boilers and Le Grand Hall where complete engines were assembled.

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From time to time the great factory, which gave some employment and life to an old town that was otherwise pretty moribund, was modernised or changed. Gas light gave way to electricity, coal, coke and steam power too. But by the beginning of the nineteen thirties, the factory had declined into little more than a simple repair and storage facility. No longer did the furnaces and forges create new parts. No longer did they really make anything. They had to be content to mend what others made and still others broke. But the war started and the German take-over in 1940 of the newly created Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer français had offered a respite of a sort from this gradual decline; and for the duration of the occupation they were busy, with a night shift and good pay. 

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It was tragic irony that it had taken a war to reinstate the night shift. The Germans had conquered France two years before and, while life in what they laughably called the Free Zone was not as bad, by all accounts, as in the north, the railways were now part of the economy that served the Germans. The occupier needed the railways to operate properly, to carry whatever they wanted around France and, more importantly, back to Germany.

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After the war ended, the Atelier simply fell back into its pre-war decline culminating in closure in 1884