page_title: Cambrai
section_title: Railway history
hierarchical_section_title: Cambrai / Geography / Routes of communication and transport / Railway / Railway history
caption_attribution_description: Carte postale ancienne d'éditeur J. D. V. w:fr:Cambrai - la gare terminus du Chemin de fer du Cambrésis
context_page_description: Cambrai, formerly Cambray and historically in English Camerick or Camericke, is a commune in the Nord department and in the Hauts-de-France region of France on the Scheldt river, which is known locally as the Escaut river.
  A sub-prefecture of the department, Cambrai is a town which had 32,518 inhabitants in the Census of 2009. It is in the heart of the urban unit of Cambrai which, with 47,138 inhabitants, ranks as 7th largest of the department. Its urban area, a more extensive range, included 65,986 inhabitants in 2009. With Lille and the towns of the former Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, it is also part of the Metropolitan area of Lille which has more than 3.8 million inhabitants.
  Towards the end of the Roman Empire, Cambrai replaced Bavay as the "capital" of the land of the Nervii. At the beginning of the Merovingian era, Cambrai became the seat of an immense archdiocese covering all the right bank of the Scheldt and the centre of a small ecclesiastical principality, roughly coinciding with the shire of Brabant, including the central part of the Low Countries. The bishopric had some limited secular power and depended on the Holy Roman Empire until annexation to France in 1678.
context_section_description: As early as 1833 the municipal council sought passage of a railway line through Cambrai. However, a route through Arras and Douai, to Lille, with a branch to Valenciennes, was preferred in 1845. It remained, therefore, to connect Cambrai to this line, which was done in 1878 by a single, winding line between Cambrai and Douai. Meanwhile Cambrai had been linked, in 1858, to the Paris-Brussels line by a branch line from Busigny and joining Somain, near Douai.
  Other railway lines of local interest saw development in the 19th century, particularly in 1880 the Société des Chemin de Fer du Cambrésis which operated three routes in the Cambrésis between Cambrai, Caudry, Saint-Quentin, Le Cateau and Denain. An agricultural use of Cambrai to Marquion, now off line, was also open in 1898.
  Cambrai railway station was also the terminus of a standard gauge secondary route of CGL/VFIL linking Marquion and Boisleux-au-Mont.
caption: The Gare du Cambrésis, former head of the line of the Chemin de Fer du Cambrésis
exif: {}