page_title: Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture
section_title: III - the Ouest Company's 'Chemin de Fer de Ceinture Rive Gauche'
hierarchical_section_title: Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture / One Ring, Three Lines / III - the Ouest Company's 'Chemin de Fer de Ceinture Rive Gauche'
caption_attribution_description: Viaduc d'Auteuil
context_page_description: Paris' former Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture, also colloquially known as La Petite Ceinture, was a circular railway built as a means to supply the city's fortification walls, and as a means of transporting merchandise and passengers between Paris' major rail-company stations. Beginning as two distinct 'Ceinture Syndicate' freight and 'Paris-Auteuil' passenger lines from 1851, these lines formed an arc that surrounded the northern two thirds of Paris, an arc that would become a full circle of rail around the capital when its third Ceinture Rive Gauche section was built in 1867.
  Although the Syndicate-owned portion of the line was freight-only in its first years, after the creation of a passenger service from 1862, the Chemin de fer de Ceinture became Paris' first metro-like urban transport, and even more so after the 'Ceinture Rive Gauche' passenger-and-freight section began. The line's passenger service was a popular means of public transport until its 1900 Universal Exposition peak-traffic year.
  Paris' first Metro line opened that year: from then, the numbers of those using the Petite Ceinture passenger service dropped steadily until its closure 1934.
context_section_description: From 1852 the state had continued, non-officially, their own plan-study for the Left Bank arc of rail that would complete their original fortification-provision goals, and from 1857 this became an official pre-project that Napoleon III declared 'of public interest' in 1861. As all of the Ceinture Syndicate company lines were already connected between them, they saw no commercial interest in this. The state, intent in their aims, had begun procuring the funds necessary to purchase the lands and lay rail for the line even before Napoleon III's declaration, and had from 1863 begun the landscaping and bridge work needed for a Chemin de fer de Ceinture Rive Gauche: bridges because, unlike the Rive Droite Ceinture line, the Rive Gauche wouldn't block traffic, but pass over and under streets over bridges, below underpasses and through tunnels.
  It is worth mentioning that, during the above, Paris had doubled in size: from 1860, Paris annexed all the 'country communes' between its city tax walls and the fortifications, which put the formerly countryside Ceinture line within the new City limits. Providing a passenger service for these 'new arrondissements' became yet another State goal, as was the need for railway transport to the upcoming 1867 International Exposition that would bring crowds of visitors to the Left Bank Champ de Mars.
  In earlier state-rail-company negotiations, the state had obtained the possibility of buying the Auteuil line back from the Ouest company, and they used this as leverage to get the company to agree to signing a Ceinture Rive Gauche concession convention on 31 May 1865. In this agreement, the state would return the Auteuil-line concession to the Ouest company, would complete the already-underway landscaping and bridges needed for the line, as well work an 'eventual' additional concession for a rail connection between their Auteuil line and the Ceinture Rive Droite at Batignolles; the state reserved, all the same, an eight-year delay during which it reserved the right to purchase some or all of the concession in case ongoing plans for a 'métropolitan' railway line went through. The Ouest company, on their side of the agreement, would lay the rail, provide all the buildings, and execute and maintain rail service; for the Exposition, the Ouest agreed to lay a 'temporary' antenna from its 'Grenelle' station north to the Champ de Mars, and make the required modifications to their Auteuil line that would allow it to be used by freight trains.
  The Ceinture Rive Gauche line began service on 25 February 1867, and the 'temporary' Grenelle-Champ de Mars portion of track entered service two days later, all in time for the Exposition opening. All that remained was the portion of rail connecting the Auteuil lines to the Ceinture Rive Droite under the railway lines from the (rebuilt and renamed since 1853) Gare St-Lazare: the underpass construction began in February 1867, and it and its new station, Courcelles-Ceinture, began service from 25 March 1869.
caption: The Auteuil bridge-viaduct (dit: 'Point du Jour') - built from 1863 to 1867, it connected the Ceinture Auteuil line to the Ceinture Rive Gauche open the same year.
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