Smith - Saint Jean sur Mer

If you follow the coast of France south from Boulogne sur Mer you will come to a wideestuary where the River Authie meets the sea, but try as you might you will not find atown called St Jean sur Mer on the south bank. The estuary of the Authie is a wild place,all mudbanks, reeds and wildfowl undisturbed by people other than the occasional hunter. The coast is developed to the north and to the south where there are wide sandybeaches but the Authie seems to be part of a forgoen world, bypassed by the modern age.

That is what you will find if you visit the area but this book creates an alternave realityin which the riverside was developed into a port and a town called St Jean sur Mer grewup on the south bank as early as the Roman period and connued to grow in medieval

In due course, as was the case throughout France, the town felt the need to be connected to the rail network and as the main line of the Nord railway passed a few kilometresto the east a narrow gauge system was promoted by local people to serve the area, the Chemins de Fer de la Cote de Picardy. The railway had its headquarters at Verton,where the Nord sta on was, but it served St Jean sur Mer where a lile staon was builtin 1898 alongside the harbour wall. Trains reversed here before connuing their journeysouth to Le Crotoy and the connec on with the Baie de Somme system, so St Jean wasquite a busy place in a relaxed French narrow gauge sort of way.

This book is set in and around the sta on in the Summer of 1958, by which me onlytourist traffic was keeping the company afloat and money was in short supply. The CdF Cote de Picardy kept going though, against all the odds.somemes it even made a small profit.

I have taken terrible liberes with the railway geography of the Picardie coast area, butthis is a work of fic on so reality needs to be disregarded for a while. Although the Baie de Somme railway was the inspira on for the book and all the places menoned other than St Jean are real, none of the events described actually happened and all the characters are the product of my imagina on.

St Jean sur Mer sta on, with the Chefs office from which Jacques could see all the comingsand goings on his sta on and in which he could hide when necessary!
The early years on theCdP. The line was openedwith a fleet of Corpet Louvet 0-6-0 tank engines.The number 1, seen in theboom picture, is the locothat would be preserved.