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I can think of one such place, a three tracks layup on the so-called "Boucle des Invalides". It is used everyday to park trains from the line 13 between rush ho

I can think of one such place, a three tracks layup on the so-called "Boucle des Invalides". It is used everyday to park trains from the line 13 between rush hours but I don't remember it being used for normal traffic. Maybe back when Invalides was the terminus of line 13, but that would put us back to circa 75-76. You can _sort of_ "see" it in this very dark video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IzCeoqn3B8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IzCeoqn3B8. As for UE worthiness, I can certainly imagine someone doing long exposure shots down there, and capture the kind of impression you got, but it probably lacks the mystique of ghost stations and secret places you can feel in the parent article.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Thank You for looking/thinking. I watched the video, but that wasn't in it, not even close. As to the UE worthiness, I don't know. It really 'flashed' me at the time. No long exposure needed. Just the movement. Had to be Sunday, late morning/early noon because i took a night train from Bonn/Cologne with sleeper cars(didn't slee at all!) over Belgium, where I only remember Liège and Charleroi, and nothing else until Paris. Can't remember exactly anymore how much time I wasted on foot in the city. Had to catch the train to Madrid over Hendaye/Irun in something like late noon, 14:xx. So that was the timeframe. I remember feeling hot from schlepping two suitcases for several kilometers, crisscrossing Paris while the weather was good. Had to be June/July, otherwise no summer holidays :-) Imagine sitting almost alone in the cab, on the right side. Driving trough some tunnel, suddenly going down noticably, which opens to some sort of ramp on the right side, where you can see a large open hall with almost no columns, dozens of tracks, at least several football fields long. On the opposite side also a ramp, also descending to the other side of the field of tracks. The ramps illuminated by orange lights spaced maybe 2 to 3 meters apart, on the ground, besides the tracks. In the 'field' between the dozen of parallel tracks elevated ways of metal mesh(gridiron?). Crossing the field of tracks on both ends and in the middle diagonal tracks and switches, making something like three X-es over that. Almost all metal surfaces shiny, reflecting. All the colored signals which were also there, mostly on the ground besides the tracks, some on poles between the tracks, some on the walls where the ramps come down. You moving from the left side, through the middle X to the right side, maybe for half a minute to short of a minute. All the lights and signals changing their reflections. Turning around, looking to the left side. Seeing the same play of reflections there. Another tunnel exiting from the middle of the field between the two end ramps. All rather dark if not for the signals and orange lights lining all tracks. Thinking... "Whoa! What was that?!" while moving up the ramp on the right side into another tunnel. So that had to be some deep place, because at least the ramps on both ends on both sides descended down into it for at least two floors, and it had one tunnel in the middle of one end which I couldn't see much of, but it seemed level, no grade. Anyways, I think I'll search for Paris Metro subterran infrastructure/depot/switching yard, or something like that. Das lässt mir keine Ruhe! (deepl.com) Ça ne me laissera pas un instant de répit ! That gives me no peace!
- johncoltrane 5y ago
  Well, the only facilities with that many tracks are workshops, of which only a few are underground and physically separated from the main line and thus very unlikely to accept passenger traffic as they are all dead ends. From the looks of it, you arrived at Gare du Nord and departed from Gare d'Austerlitz. The best option would have been to take line 4 at Gare du Nord and switch to line 10 at Odéon until the terminus at Gare d'Austerlitz. There is nothing interesting on the first leg beside the staircase at Cité. The second leg gets more interesting at Cluny - La Sorbonne, where the two tracks become three, and right after Maubert - Mutualité, where the two tracks split to make way for a third track to go under them. That part is mentioned in the parent article as "two-level crotch". There are other interesting places on the same line, like the "triangle" between Porte d'Auteuil, Michel-Ange Molitor, and the Auteuil workshop but they are in the other direction. Another thing to note is that the tunnels of line 10 are painted in white, which makes it look cleaner than other lines.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Thank You for looking/thinking. I watched the video, but that wasn't in it, not even close. As to the UE worthiness, I don't know. It really 'flashed' me at the time. No long exposure needed. Just the movement. Had to be Sunday, late morning/early noon because i took a night train from Bonn/Cologne with sleeper cars(didn't slee at all!) over Belgium, where I only remember Liège and Charleroi, and nothing else until Paris. Can't remember exactly anymore how much time I wasted on foot in the city. Had to catch the train to Madrid over Hendaye/Irun in something like late noon, 14:xx. So that was the timeframe. I remember feeling hot from schlepping two suitcases for several kilometers, crisscrossing Paris while the weather was good. Had to be June/July, otherwise no summer holidays :-) Imagine sitting almost alone in the cab, on the right side. Driving trough some tunnel, suddenly going down noticably, which opens to some sort of ramp on the right side, where you can see a large open hall with almost no columns, dozens of tracks, at least several football fields long. On the opposite side also a ramp, also descending to the other side of the field of tracks. The ramps illuminated by orange lights spaced maybe 2 to 3 meters apart, on the ground, besides the tracks. In the 'field' between the dozen of parallel tracks elevated ways of metal mesh(gridiron?). Crossing the field of tracks on both ends and in the middle diagonal tracks and switches, making something like three X-es over that. Almost all metal surfaces shiny, reflecting. All the colored signals which were also there, mostly on the ground besides the tracks, some on poles between the tracks, some on the walls where the ramps come down. You moving from the left side, through the middle X to the right side, maybe for half a minute to short of a minute. All the lights and signals changing their reflections. Turning around, looking to the left side. Seeing the same play of reflections there. Another tunnel exiting from the middle of the field between the two end ramps. All rather dark if not for the signals and orange lights lining all tracks. Thinking... "Whoa! What was that?!" while moving up the ramp on the right side into another tunnel. So that had to be some deep place, because at least the ramps on both ends on both sides descended down into it for at least two floors, and it had one tunnel in the middle of one end which I couldn't see much of, but it seemed level, no grade. Anyways, I think I'll search for Paris Metro subterran infrastructure/depot/switching yard, or something like that. Das lässt mir keine Ruhe! (deepl.com) Ça ne me laissera pas un instant de répit ! That gives me no peace!

johncoltrane 5y ago
Well, the only facilities with that many tracks are workshops, of which only a few are underground and physically separated from the main line and thus very unlikely to accept passenger traffic as they are all dead ends. From the looks of it, you arrived at Gare du Nord and departed from Gare d'Austerlitz. The best option would have been to take line 4 at Gare du Nord and switch to line 10 at Odéon until the terminus at Gare d'Austerlitz. There is nothing interesting on the first leg beside the staircase at Cité. The second leg gets more interesting at Cluny - La Sorbonne, where the two tracks become three, and right after Maubert - Mutualité, where the two tracks split to make way for a third track to go under them. That part is mentioned in the parent article as "two-level crotch". There are other interesting places on the same line, like the "triangle" between Porte d'Auteuil, Michel-Ange Molitor, and the Auteuil workshop but they are in the other direction. Another thing to note is that the tunnels of line 10 are painted in white, which makes it look cleaner than other lines.