Dwhere did the “tac-tac” of the wagons of yesteryear come from? How does a train driver’s cabin work? What is a “black dog” in railway workers’ language? Perhaps you have already asked yourself these questions. No need to be a railway enthusiast for this. The answers can now be found in a book published by Plon: “Plus Belle la ligne” (1). Its author, Wilfried Demaret, is a passionate railway worker and a native Périgord (he grew up in Saint-Léon-sur-l’Isle), having acquired a nice little notoriety on social networks.
This book written by a passionate railway worker, published by Plon, is the ideal companion for journeys on the rails.
Wilfried Demaret
The train is his hobby. Since it is “as high as the step of a TGV”. This is what he writes in the foreword to his book, his very first. His father worked in the SNCF workshops in Périgueux: “So I have, basically, a DNA made of rails and sleepers. » But the real turning point came to him around the age of 20, when he had “the chance” to get into a TGV cabin. “From that moment on, I did everything I could to become a train driver. »
Driving trains is what Wilfried Demaret has been doing for twenty-five years for the SNCF. Today based in Brive (Corrèze), he is attached to what he calls the “Rail Samu”: “We repair all TER, Intercités, and border trains. » Before that, he tested practically all types of cabins. And, over time and the railway kilometers traveled, he gleaned hundreds of stories and anecdotes, often funny, rarely sad, sometimes frightening.
“Several publishers have contacted me to make a book of my threads. At first, I didn’t really believe it.”
For example, there is the one that talks about the first RER in the morning, in the Parisian suburbs: “This RER, he says, leaves from the distant northern suburbs of Paris and, little by little, picks up the first workers from the capital. We call them ‘the army of shadows’, because in the cold early mornings, when the fog lifts, they look like shadows on the docks. These people are invisible, but so essential. »
-More than 500 mini-stories
There are also stories that concern the Dordogne, his native land. One that evokes the “legendary Bijou madeleines”. Another recounts the time when the railway worker writer almost ran over a hunter in the south of the department, on the Agen-Périgueux line. Spoiler alert: “It ended well, fortunately,” he reveals.
In this work, Wilfried Demaret also relates the most astonishing stories from the life of rail around the world: the legend of the British chicken cannon or the, more true, story of cats becoming station masters in Japan.
Since 2015, Wilfried Demaret has shared more than 500 mini-stories of this kind on social networks, notably on his X account: “BB27000”. The latter has exceeded 104,000 subscribers. Such a success that it is even followed by the CEO of the SNCF.
“Plus Belle la ligne” is a collection of his chosen pieces 2.0. “Several publishers contacted me to make a book of my threads (2), he confides. At first, I didn’t really believe it. But when Plon contacted me, I understood that it was possible to achieve something good. » The one who, with his stories, seeks to make us love the train, saw in this literary adventure the opportunity to address other readers, those who do not have the Internet.
(1) Price: 23 euros. 265 pages. Available in all bookstores and on the usual sales platforms.
(2) A “thread” is a sequence of messages containing closely associated information. This is a very common practice on X.
