Between ecological issues and opening up, in Aude, the battle rages to revive the Limoux-Quillan train

Carcassonne and Quillan (Aude), special envoy.

Can a mayor tear out the railway tracks of a suspended line in his town? This surreal scene almost happened in Quillan, a small town nestled in the upper Aude valley. It was there, at the foot of the Pyrenees , that the mayor Pierre Castel (LR), eager to remove the rails to install a tourist greenway in their place, wanted to give his project a boost, on November 16, 2024, with the help of an excavator.

"We're not going to stop trains from running," he joked in the local press, even though trains have stopped running between his town and the prefecture, Carcassonne, via Limoux, since January 2018. The attempt provoked a counterattack from the CGT railway workers. "We were irritated by these threats. The CGT called on the prefect and SNCF Réseau not to interfere with the common good that is railways. Fortunately, their responses were firm," rejoiced Bruno Bréhon. regional manager of the CGT railway workers.

The penalties faced by the mayor and his cronies could indeed reach up to twenty years in prison and a fine of 300,000 euros. The action of November 16th thus changed in nature. While the excavator was indeed present, to mime the tearing up of the rails, Pierre Castel and the association Tous pour la voie verte simply repainted part of the rails using rustproofing... in green. "We are not idiots. The train costs 100 million euros to rebuild the...