Blue Train Races - The Blue Train

The Blue Train

Le Train Bleu (lit. "the blue train"), officially the Calais-Méditerranée Express, was a luxury French night express train which carried wealthy and famous passengers between Calais and the French Riviera from 1922 until 1938. It was colloquially referred to as "le train bleu" in French and the Blue Train in English because of its dark blue sleeping cars, and became formally known as Le Train Bleu after World War II.

It was created by a private French railroad company, the Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée, or PLM, to take British aristocrats, celebrities and the wealthy to the French Riviera. It made its first journey on December 8, 1922.

The prime season for "le train bleu" was between November and April, when wealthy travellers escaped the British winter to spend their holiday on the French Riviera. It originated at the Gare Maritime in Calais, where it picked up British passengers from the ferries across the English Channel. It departed at 1:00 in the afternoon and went to the Gare du Nord in Paris, then around Paris by the Grande Ceinture line to the Gare de Lyon, where it picked up additional passengers and coaches. It departed Paris early in the evening, and made stops at Dijon, Châlons, and Lyon, before reaching Marseille early in the morning. It then made stops at all the major resort towns of the French Riviera, or Côte d'Azur: St. Raphael, Juan-les-Pins, Antibes, Cannes, Nice, Monaco, and its final destination, Menton, near the Italian border.