page_title: Voie ferrée d'intérêt local
section_title: Small trains
hierarchical_section_title: Voie ferrée d'intérêt local / Small trains
caption_attribution_description: Carte postale ancienne éditée par ND, n°1452&#160;:Gare de Plougasnou des Chemins de Fer Armoricains
context_page_description: In France, a voie ferrée d'intérêt local, abbreviated VFIL, is a secondary railway constructed by a local administrative division, serving sparsely populated rural areas. These areas were beyond the economic reach of the networks of the intérêt général, which were concessions of the grandes compagnies who ran their lines for profit.
context_section_description: The locomotives and other rolling stock also had a scaled-down appearance when compared with those of the larger networks. The steam locomotives were often tank engines, generally having  three axles, with or without Bissel bogies front or rear. They were comparatively light, weighing from 8 to 25 t (7.9 to 24.6 long tons; 8.8 to 27.6 short tons) unladen. Later, petrol and diesel multiple units appeared as railbuses. Overall, these machines formed short trains of at most about a dozen small carriages or wagons, often far fewer.
  Routes were quite short, some tens of kilometres, with operational speed below 20 km/h (12 mph). The slowness and rudimentary comfort of the secondary railways have passed into folk stories; anecdotes abound of unsavoury episodes, passengers getting off the train to push it up a steep hill, children hot-wiring cars to run alongside the breathing machine. Their users gave them nicknames: tortillards ("twisters"), tacots ("bangers"), coucous ("cuckoos"), yoyo (imitative, as on the Boisleux Marquion line), and so on.
  Author Marcel Proust refers often to one such train service in his novel Within a Budding Grove, always using the full phrase "le petit chemin de fer d'intérêt local" in French, literally translated as "the little train of local interest".
caption: Gare de Plougasnou of the Chemins de fer armoricains
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