Pietro Scoppetta: The PMP Paris Metro
in OO scale
(Written by PG)
One of the great painters of the Italian ‘800 and one of my favorites is Pietro Scoppetta.
In particular I share deeply with this Neapolitan artist his love for Paris, the city where he lived, worked and that he expressed very well in his paintings.
While I admired his “Café de la Paix” … ..
…. I thought, after the Berlin S-Bahn Luise Herr, of speaking of PMP Parisian metro.
The first line of the Paris metro network ….
… the existing line 1, dated of 1900. At the time linked Chateau de Vincennes to Porte Maillot … ..
…. along the historical axis of the town carrying, incredible thing for the era, a few thousand passengers a day ….
Today the same line, for some years with fully automated driverless trains …
… .trasports alone more than 600,000 passengers a day, from Chateau de Vincennes to La Defense.
The entire network of the Paris Metro carries about 16 lines … ..
… .1700 Million passengers a year … ..
…. not counting the RER network, coming in addition to the subway in the 70s, which carries at least as many,
linking the city with neighboring districts.
In 1908, after a terrible accident in 1903 at the Couronnes station. …
…. in which 83 people died asphyxiated, the old original trains …
…. made from wood two axles carriages
….
…. were completely replaced by Spargue-Thompson convoys ….
…. made of cars to trucks
in full metal ….
… Except for the backbone of the wooden seats.
The Spargue-Thompson had a long life, the last were withdrawn from service in 1983 …
…. and they characterized the Paris Metro for most of the last century .
The first reproduction of these in OO scale
trains is the work of PMP in 1946.
This brand … ..
…. had been founded in the same year by Marie-Pierre Pillon and the underground train Spargue-Thompson is one of its first achievements.
It comes in a sturdy cardboard box ….
…. which contains the transformer, a binary circle three rails whose elements Maerklin material of the same age and were resumed with the same geometry from VB.
The same train, ….
made of elements in lamination of deep drawn iron, is composed of a loco and a car in green livery (class II) ….
…. and one in red livery (first class).
The first class was abolished on the Parisian network only in the 70s.
The train runs on AC three-rails, the locomotive …
..
… .owns a single motor axis which meshes directly, via a helical gear, on the worm screw keyed on vertical axis of the motor, provided with a single induction coil and therefore is not equipped of reverse.
The windows are of celluloid.
This train was produced for a very short time, very few examples and is extremely rare today.
(@ February 22, 2017)
And now the artist Pietro Scoppetta
