Claude Monet

Claude Monet – Gare Saint Lazare and “La Maison des Trains”

(Written by P.G.)

cats a Montmartre by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen

In 1877 Claude Monet, in differents hours and lights and from different angles, painted a series of views  of the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris, which, with his series of large canopies of iron and glass, is one of the major symbols of architecture of its time , not only for architectural railways.

The large station, designed by architect Alfred Armand and the engineer Eugène Flachat was inaugurated in 1853, already in 1867 sees passing 25 million travelers a year, to arrive at today’ s nearly 300 million …

 On the Gare Saint Lazare wrote Emile Zola:
…. “We hear the clatter of the trains arrive and depart, you can see the plumes of smoke that rotate under large canopies. Today the painting is there, in those modern environments with their beautiful greatness.

Our artists have to discover the poetry of trains and stations like their fathers discovered that of the forests and rivers “… ..

And it is right in front of the station that began to arrive, back in the 30s, also trains in HO/OO scale.
Host in “Passage du Havre”, which leads into the square painted by Camille Pissarro

the shop “La Maison des Trains”

The same passage also hosts another great Parisian shop of trains “Au Pelican”.

If you go now to Paris, do not look for them, they closed in the 90s; the “Passage du Havre” was entirely rebuilt and is now free of train operation.

After being one of the first retailers of Maerklin, Trix and Jep, “la Maison des Trains” announced in 1938 the first locomotive of its own production, the 2D2 5400 SNCF, one of the modern electric locomotives of the newly-born SNCF

It is a splendid model for those times, works in AC three rails and it is produced in small series,

with a simple and robust engine, manual reversing, bronze case, hooks and Maerklin pantographs

It has a solid construction and still today, 77 years old, can tow effortlessly a train of ten cars in metal carts.
Then, after the war begins the series of steam locomotives, often built on mechanical Maerklin, later also Fleischmann, with bronze case.

One day Monet, talking to a friend, he declared fascinated by “threatening solidity” of the locomotives …
… And I find that “threatening stability” is what it is expressed by locomotives in scale HO/OO of  “La Maison des Trains” ……

The 241P 50s is almost the finest reproduction of this powerful locomotive and , with a weight of 1740 g, is one of the heaviest models ever made in scale HO / OO

Even the 150 East

and the various Pacific PO / Midi

follow the same design concept adopted until the ’60s,

then the “Maison” slows and ceases its constructive activity to devote himself exclusively to the trade

just when the spirals of smoke, so lovely to Claude Monet, disappear from the Gare Saint Lazare ….

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(@March 25, 2015)