Before the current harsh times turned them into freight trains, these trains were the very image of a golden age for the railway: abundant, overloaded, and enthusiastically accepted by a civilization that had practically no other means of transport. While the transport of goods by rail is progressing, it is far from progressing as much as it should, because, from 1910, road transport began to take a share that would continue to increase sharply until 1974, before beginning a relative decline until the end of the 20th century, before experiencing an encouraging recovery recently. The truck offensive between the two wars even managed to reduce the total transported by rail between 1929 and 1938, helped by the economic crisis of the 1930s. The progress observed between 1938 and 1949 was mainly due to a near-paralysis of road transport between 1940 and 1946: France, in a period of fuel and tire shortages, remembered that it had a railway and gave a reprieve even to the smallest secondary railway, which had been duly condemned shortly before by economic decision-makers. The regression began in the aftermath of the oil shock, but it was general with the decline of the economy. In 1950, the SNCF had 40 large marshalling yards, two of which, Le Bourget and Villeneuve-St-Georges, handled 3,000 to 4,000 wagons per day. Freight trains, especially "RO", were heavy trains of 1,000 to 1,600 t, and slow with an average commercial speed of 40 to 50 km/h, and a maximum speed of 75 km/h. They run during off-peak hours and clear the marshalling yards at the most convenient times, often at night. Made up of wagons of all types, hauled by steam locomotives type 140, 141 or 150, then electric BBs, later diesels, these trains are the very type of long freight train whose noise can be heard at night in the major railway junctions. During the first major electrification in single-phase industrial frequency between Valenciennes and Thionville, the CC-14000 or CC-14100 type locomotives, built especially for freight traffic on this line between 1954 and 1957, were established with a maximum speed of 60 km/h. Speeding up freight trains was a major challenge in the 1960s, perhaps commercially, but above all technically: the slowness of freight trains clogged the lines and seriously reduced their throughput, creating a paralysis that was detrimental to the overall performance of the SNCF, and was a boon for road competition. The increase in the speed of the slowest trains was planned for the 1960s, to reach 80 km/h by 1 January 1970, and many express trains would run at 100 or 120 km/h. Until around 1994, freight traffic on European networks continued to fall, accompanied by an economic crisis that was the cause. Then, from 1994-1995, the curve reversed upwards, showing not only the reality of the economic recovery, but also the indispensable and even vital role that the railway can, alone, play within the economic activity of the major European countries. Finally, an optimistic note in an often grey railway news story…. It is true that in France, in particular and despite the success of the TGV, there are old bad habits of thought favouring road and air despite their disastrous ecological results and all French railway investments, for 1998, total 89 billion francs while in Germany, it is 270 billion: the French public authorities, despite recent declarations full of good intentions, are not yet playing the railway card frankly and are still giving pride of place to road transport. The oil crisis of 1974 marked, for economists, the end of what is now called "the thirty glorious years" that were the years 1945-1975. For the French railways, passenger traffic fell from 63 in 1990 to 55 billion unit-kilometers currently, and for goods, the fall was from 70 (in 1980) to 50. The year 1974 was the best year of the post-war period for the SNCF and all railway workers still remember it... Will this golden age return?