FRENCH STEAM FESTIVAL - MAY 2023 [5]

On the Sunday it was the same heritage railcar arriving at Provins for the short run to Longueville, but this time it was raining! I decided to head up to Villiers St Georges on the first excursion, topped and tailed by the 2-8-2 and the 2-8-0.
Villiers St Georges was a mass of dismantled track and redundant grain silos among grass carpeted running lines and platforms. The station building had been refurbished, with history panels telling the story of the line, but SNCF had it/have it in their sights and closure of this freight branch is, I fear, inevitable.
American soldiers lurked beneath the trees, in WWII style, and some of the carriages had a great Art Deco features - or is it Art Nouveau?
As we drew up in Longueville, the other 2-8-0 was going through its paces, but I opted for a run behind two heritage diesels, one - BB 67165 - of a type very familiar from the Boulogne-Paris route.
This excursion nearly backfired as, during the run round, a loose carriage bolt was spotted and we could have been stranded at Nogent Sur Seine. Fortunately, someone had a big enough spanner and we were back in time to take the steam train to Romilly Sur Seine - home of a large SNCF 'train recycling centre'.