Chemins de fer de l'État

The Chemins de fer de l'État ("State Railways"), often referred to in France as the Réseau de l'État ("State Network"), was an early state-owned French railway company.

The company was established by state order of the Third Republic on 25 May 1878 to take over ten small failing railway companies operating in the area between the rivers Loire and Garonne:

Additional acquisitions included:

On 18 November 1908, the État absorbed the Chemins de fer de l'Ouest and in 1934 took over the Paris-Orléans company's lines in southern Brittany. At its greatest extent its operating area comprised all the territory west of a line extending from Dieppe by way of Paris to Bordeaux. On 1 January 1938 the État merged with all the other French railway companies to form the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF), becoming that company's Région Ouest. The État then took a seat on the SNCF's Board of Directors, as did all the other companies until 1982 when all traces of the constituents of the SNCF disappeared.

One of the PO's flagship lines was Paris-Orléans-Bordeaux. The État wished to create a competing line to the PO's. The PO line served Tours, Poitiers, and Angoulême, while the État decided to serve Chartres, Courtalain, Saumur, Niort, and Saintes, almost parallel to the competing line.

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