Railway lore

Following the late start to railway lore noticed at references 1 and 2, yesterday I came across a train called a Decauville, in a Maigret story, chugging around some yard or other, probably not a regular train. For once both Littré and Larousse failed me, while Google did the business. It seems that M. Decauville was a French entrepreneur who invented and did very well out of narrow gauge railways, rolling stock and locomotives. Wikipedia offers this picture, which I presume is of the identification plate which was attached to the front of one of his locos.

Worth noting also that the Maigret story in question - La Charretier de la "Providence" - was the first which I have read which makes a big deal of the milieu in which the story is set, in this case the canals to the east of Paris, at a time when a lot of the barges were still horse-hauled. Rather in the way that lots of more recent thrillers make a big deal of chunks of specialised knowledge - say about the luggage handling arrangements in airports - to give a bit of colour to the thrills. An early Maigret which, as it happens, was written on a boat on a canal, but not something which I have come across in Simenon before. Perhaps he grew out of it.

I offer as a factlet from this particular milieu, the fact that a horse drawn canal boat which did not have its own two horses and on-board stable was known as a banana - which also happens to be the French word for a banana, from the Portuguese.

The story of the books themselves starts at reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/a-different-kind-of-heritage-operation.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/swanage.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/simenon-1.html.