The little vans bringing forgotten railways back to life

By Earth to Sea News · 26 July 2026

France has 5,700 kilometres of sleeping train lines. The fix is a van that thinks it is a train.

Across rural France, about 5,700 kilometres of little railway lines have fallen silent, too light and too costly to reopen for modern trains, leaving whole valleys without public transport. Rather than let them sleep under the leaves, the engineering firm SICEF has built the Ferromobile: an electric Peugeot people mover fitted with a clever system that lets it roll off the road and straight onto the rails. It carries up to eight passengers, runs itself automatically once it is on the track, and can follow a timetable or be booked on demand from a phone, like a ride share that happens to be a tiny train.

Trials began this year on the Courpiere to Vertolaye line in the Auvergne, and the idea is already turning heads in Occitanie, Brittany and Nouvelle Aquitaine, with planners talking this month about reconnecting villages that lost their trains decades ago. The loveliest part is what it does not need: no new roads, no heavy engineering, just the quiet reuse of tracks that were lying there all along. If the trials keep going well, regular services are planned for 2028, and the forgotten lines of the French countryside will hum again.