In any case, steam had to die. A world disappeared in 1974, that of steam locomotives and railway workers with faces blackened by smoke, traditional coal will have lived and will be replaced by electricity or diesel. The last steam locomotive to have carried out commercial passenger transport via the SNCF ran in 1969, and the last commercial steam transport in France was carried out in 1974. Since then, all the steam locomotives that circulate in France are tourist convoys. One can only understand the deep sadness and great disappointment of André Chapelon. But if we consider, on the one hand, the price of energy supplied by power plants, a price that has continued to fall, and, on the other hand, the price of labor, a price that has continued to rise due to a necessary economic and social evolution already underway since the aftermath of the Second World War, we will understand to what extent the electric locomotive, consuming nuclear energy, driven by a single operator, economical in maintenance, could only supplant steam wherever there were intense transport needs. Could André Chapelon have foreseen the rise of nuclear energy in France, the increasing cost of labor, the loss of competitiveness of coal as a source of traction energy, the oil shocks, factors which have all, in turn or together, brought advantages to electric or diesel traction for non-electrified lines. The remarkable performance of steam traction is not in question, nor its exemplary reliability with an incident rate of around one per million km: the best electric locomotives are at 15 per million. It is indeed the cost alone that played a role: the cost not of the locomotives (they are half as expensive as their electric or diesel equivalents) but of their coal, their maintenance, their driving. And maintaining steam certainly means maintaining an import of coal which for 1937, for example, is 30,876,000 tonnes corresponding to an expenditure of 4.850 billion francs, or 40% of the coal consumed nationally: France is the largest importer of coal in the world! Indeed, France, during the 1930s, imported on average 1/5th of the coal circulating in the world and the French railways consumed more than 1/6th of this import, or 820 million francs. 1974 Brand The massive deliveries of thermal locomotives belonging to the 67000 class, whose orders had been calculated to absorb steam traction and have a more manageable reserve potential at the national level than the 141 R of the cold reserve, precipitate the final decisions with regard to the Mikado "Libération" whose baptismal name is now only a distant memory. Faced with the cost and the importance of the servitudes specific to steam traction, in particular, maintenance in good condition, relighting, reduction of installations, problems related to authorized driving personnel, technical contingencies, the Transport management decides, at the end of March, to reduce the fleets of the establishments one last time and to keep only about thirty units which could possibly be used for non-commercial purposes, for example, rental to third parties for steam production. Hit by the test limits, the fleet dwindles during the third and fourth quarters. Thus, 28 years and four months after the first turns of the wheels of the 141 R 458 to 468 in Châlons, the last 141 R was used in France on an ordinary freight train. It was the R 73 of the Eastern network that had this honour, on 28 March 1974, when it towed the RO 51 083 from Béning to Sarreguemines, but unlike the R 466, decorated with flags and accompanied by a crowd of jubilant admirers and curious onlookers, the event went almost unnoticed!. So this ends this extraordinary story of the 141 R, whose electric traction and thermal engines got the better of them. This series behaved remarkably for more than a quarter of a century. Its continued service for a very long time after the withdrawal of other series of more recent steam engines was largely influenced by its perfect working order. They could have continued to run for many years, provided they underwent the necessary major maintenance work. Progress has decided otherwise! With their definitive extinction, an entire atmosphere is disappearing. It will be hard to forget their familiar image. Let's not talk about the "mechanic-driver" teams, forming a block, having lived together, in all weathers, for long hours. A page in the history of the railway has been turned... https://trainspirit.fr https://trainconsultant.com