TGV Lyria

TGV Lyria is the brand name used for TGV railway lines connecting France and Switzerland. Lyria is also a corporation that runs the service using the staff of SNCF in France and Swiss Federal Railways (SBB CFF FFS) in Switzerland – the staff consists of one French and one Swiss train manager on the whole journey.

Initially, the corporation was a groupement d'intérêt économique (GIE: "group of (shared) economic interest") between SNCF and SBB CFF FFS whose goal was the creation of a TGV service between Gare de Lyon (Paris) and Lausanne/Bern. Today, the corporation is officially a limited company according to French law (Société par actions simplifiée / SAS ). SNCF owns 74% of the capital and SBB CFF FFS the remaining 26%.

Starting in mid-1961, the route between Paris and Lausanne was operated by the Trans Europ Express Cisalpin trains, which continued on to Milan. On January 22, 1984, this service was replaced by a new TGV service with tri-current locomotives, though service was cut back to Lausanne. In the spirit of the previous European expresses, the trains were christened with names: Champs-Elysées, Lemano, Lutetia and Cisalpin. On May 31, 1987, the train service was rebranded as EuroCity. By this time, a service to Bern was in place as well.

The GIE was created for the first time on May 23, 1993, to operate the segments between Paris and Lausanne/Bern. Service to Geneva was not covered at that time. During the winter of 1995–1996, a single roundtrip per day was extended from Lausanne to Brigue to stop at stations serving ski resorts in the Rhône Valley. As was the case with other trains with similar service, these trains were branded as TGV des Neiges. On September 28, 1997, the service was slightly reorganized and rebranded as Ligne de Cœur, with new livery applied to the rolling stock. On March 4, 2002, the name Lyria was applied for the first time to the service. The name then slowly came to stand for all TGV services between France and Switzerland and was applied to Paris–Geneva trains around January 2005. Service to Geneva had existed as part of LGV Sud-Est since 1981.

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Wikipedia