Paris Gare d'Austerlitz

[LNW-GW Joint]

I made my first trip via Paris Austerlitz this week, the last of the major Paris stations I have used, and was surprised to find the station enduring a major rebuild.
It has scaffolding of extraordinary scale and density holding the roof up, and navigating the station via the narrow corridors is not at all easy.
I read in Wikipedia that Austerlitz is being expanded to take overspill from Lyon and Montparnasse stations on the TGV lines, "to be completed by 2020": it hasn't happened yet.

My trip was Bordeaux-Toulouse-Sète, and then Toulouse-Brive-Limoges-Les Aubrais (Orléans)-Paris, all on excellent Intercités Corail trains behind class 26xxx locos, even the final nominal TER Orléans-Paris service.
Routes via Orléans are much reduced in importance with TGVs using faster alternative routes, but I see there is now a couple of peak TGV Ouigo services into Austerlitz on a Nantes-Blois-Orléans-Paris route (at regular line speeds).
I can see how Bordeaux TGV services can reach Austerlitz, but not how TGV Sud Est trains can get there on a direct route.
Does anybody have insight into how/when Austerlitz will get back to being a decent station again?

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I used Austerlitz in 2018 for a trip on the Sleeper and it was a nightmare then with all the scaffolding, though you could see glimpses of what looked like a beautiful old station beneath the hoardings. When I saw a thread with this title I hoped it might be about the work being completed and the revived station unveiled... perhaps it's been held up by le pandemique* or by that French national pastime, industrial disputes and rioting!

*- deliberate pidgin-French, before anyone starts!

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

A new east facing curve is required at Choisy-le-Roi to connect the PO main line from Austerlitz to the southern orbital line from Massy so that the LGV Sud Est can be accessed. It has been in the plans for years but no progress to date. The eastern side of of Austlerlitz is now buried beneath a new district which includes the Mitterand library.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

A new east facing curve is required at Choisy-le-Roi to connect the PO main line from Austerlitz to the southern orbital line from Massy so that the LGV Sud Est can be accessed. It has been in the plans for years but no progress to date. The eastern side of of Austlerlitz is now buried beneath a new district which includes the Mitterand library.

Yes, you seem to have reached the station but in fact it's a large new over-line development for the library.
You emerge into daylight briefly again and then you are into the bomb-site of Austerlitz proper.
Pic of the scaffolding over the main platforms.



I used a train from Toulouse to Cahors which was announced as being destination Paris Bercy, not Austerlitz.
Perhaps late trains are diverted to enable work on the station upgrade.
Bercy (essentially a detached south-western portion of Gare de Lyon) is another station getting services which it never used to, mainly regional TER services.
I did use Bercy once in the days of French Motorail/Auto-Train, leaving the car there and travelling to Bordeaux separately by TGV from Montparnasse.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

The Clermont Ferrand services have run from Bercy for some years now because of capacity problems at Lyon - a right pain, although it does have its own Metro station. My least favourite Paris station is Montparnasse - hopelessly overcrowded concourse and it is an awfully long walk with luggage from the rear of a double TGV set to the Metro.

 

[stuving]

In 2019 high levels of airborne lead (from the paint being stripped off the roof) were found, and work was stopped and restarted subjct to monitoring. The issue concerns both the public spaces (below the barrier in the scaffolding) and the working spaces. Of course this issue had its public profile rasied by the Notre Dame fire, too.

Work has been stop-start since then, with a succession of predicted end dates. Then last year they found asbestos too, and the end date was pushed back from then to April 2023. And now ... the hard "must finish by" date is the Olympics, and that's getting awfully close now. And that's only the main train shed being accessible - the whole building project will run until 2027 (current prediction).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Jun 2023 ==

PS: a report from February said the trainshed roof itself have been finished, and its scaffolding taken down. The ends and some other bits were still being done, and all the scaffolding would have gone by the end of May. Work on building new passenger facilities would then start, so the space would still be mostly off lmits. But it sounds as it that didn't quite happen after all!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I used Austerlitz in 2018 for a trip on the Sleeper and it was a nightmare then with all the scaffolding, though you could see glimpses of what looked like a beautiful old station beneath the hoardings.

Yes, Gare d'Austerlitz was a very nice old station before they started messing it around; here it is in 1992 and these pictures show quite a bit of the structure.

 

[parkender102]

My family and I took the Elipsos Trenhotel Sleeper from there to Barcelona around 2012. I remember it being quite exotic as if it was a portal to Southern Europe! Which it is. Hopefully they can get this work completed and return it to it's former glory.