Let me take you through the night

As a child, I used to travel with my mother from London to Cannes, a journey that took slightly under 24 hours. The strangest part of the trip was the three or four hours in Paris, where the train trundled between the Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon along the Petite Ceinture, giving us a view of rundown parts of Paris which tourists never normally saw. Sometimes we would cheat and take a cab, giving us a couple of hours off the train, during which we enjoyed a relaxed steak frites in the Train Bleu restaurant with its elaborate belle époque decor.

I often wondered why the train meandered so long in Paris, and Andrew Martin now provides the explanation. Our carriages from Calais would be linked to others at the Gare de Lyon, which then became the eponymous Train Bleu, and which travelled overnight through to the Côte d’Azur before terminating at Ventimiglia, just over the border in Italy.