Gare de Bellegarde

Bellegarde-sur-Valserine station is a railway station served by TGV, TER Rhône-Alpes and Rhône Express Regional located in Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, in the département of Ain, France. It hosts about 75,000 travelers per year.

The first station building opened in 1858 to allow a stop on the line between Seyssel and Geneva. The wooden building was destroyed by fire and requiring the construction of a new building in 1907. Over the years, other lines reached to the station, causing passenger numbers to grow. The first TGV service was in 1981 between Paris Gare de Lyon and Geneva. From a simple railway station, the site underwent a major restructuring in 2010 to become an interchange. This was triggered by the decision to renovate the Ligne du Haut-Bugey.

A junction station, situated at kilometer 134,252 of the Lyon–Geneva railway, and kilometer 64,523 of the Ligne du Haut-Bugey. Its altitude is 378m.

Railway history started in Bellegarde-sur-Valserine in the middle of the 19th century. In 1830, the first studies of a Bellegarde-Geneva line were done. The decision on construction of the Lyon–Geneva railway was part of a project to reduce the travel time from Paris to the Swiss border from 6 days to 12 hours, was finalized when a law was passed on 10 June 1853 by Napoleon III concerning the commitment by the treasury to the construction of a railway to the frontier of Geneva. The Seyssel-Geneva section was opened on 18 March 1858 with a halt in Bellegarde where the station building was in the style of a Swiss chalet. The station was designed as a last junction before the frontier, avoiding lines connecting French territory passing through Swiss territory. It was thus used for customs controls on people and goods.

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