Amboise Station

For many visitors, Amboise starts at the station which, despite a few restorations, has changed very little since it was built in 1846. A bridge was built the same year to access the town centre on the opposite side of the river.

The inauguration was attended by the thirty two year old Prince Louis and his brother the twenty two year old Prince Antoine. They had had a strong connection with Amboise since their father, Louis-Philippe, the last King of France, inherited Château Amboise. Two years later, in 1848, they, along with the rest of the family had to leave France when Louis-Philippe was forced to abdicate.

For many arrivals however, the purpose of their visit was the station side of the river. In 1846 the wealth of Amboise came not from tourism but from metal. The industrial district was Bout-des-Ponts near the station. The original Mabille Building is still there. In 1835, Jacques Mabille, who developed The Mabille System, founded a Company to make oil, apple and grape presses, harvesting machines, gear systems and iron screws. By 1875, the Company had 175 employees. Patented under the name of Universal Press, Mabille was famous for almost a hundred years until the outbreak of war in 1939. The old Mabille factory also near the station is also still there. It was designed by Gustave Eiffel to store airships for the 1900 Great Exhibition in Paris. Georges Mabille bought the hangar, dismantled it, sent the parts by train to Amboise and reassembled it to make metal frames using Mabille Presses.

Don’t be deceived by the station’s unremarkable appearance. If walls could speak La Gare d’Amboise has many stories to tell.

In 1852, just four years after Louis-Philippe was deposed, who should step off the train but France’s new President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte who came here to tell the Emir el Kader he was a free man. Carriages for him, his Ministers, his Generals and the rest of his entourage took them to the Château. What a sight that must have been for the station master, his staff and people who lived along the route.

In 1938 the French government nationalised the railways and formed the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais (SNCF). Two years later, Germany invaded France. German railwaymen supervised their French counterparts.

Many men who lived in and around Amboise who tended the vines were made prisoners of war or deported to Germany to work in addition to the one and a half million French soldiers sent to prison camps.

Jean-Michel Chevreau, from Chançay near Amboise, with other wine growers went to the station by night where Germans were loading wine on to trains bound for Germany. They siphoned off the wine. When reports from Germany came back saying the barrels were empty, German guards were posted at the station. When they put floats in the barrels to show they were full, Chevreau and friends emptied them and filled them with water.

May 8, 1945, marked the end of the war, but many prisoners did not arrive at the station until September. One was Roger Libsig, a butcher from Bout-des-Ponts another, André Chauvalon, was met by relieved relatives on the platform after his epic journey.

When his stalag (POW Camp Stalag 1A in Konnigsberg, East Prussia) was evacuated by the Germans in January due to the advance of Soviet troops, he headed for Murmansk. It took eleven days. He boarded a freighter bound for Norway, then another to Aberdeen. He arrived back on French soil in September at le Havre.

On Monday May 7, 1979 at Amboise station locomotive CC6527 was named Amboise

Image Jean-Pierre Vergez-Larrouy (Aug 14, 1986 in Pau)

In 1982 with 150 trains every day reaching speeds of 200 kmh) an underground tunnel replaced the level crossing. Fifteen more were removed. Michel Debré, the much revered mayor of Amboise, cut a symbolic ribbon to mark their disappearance.

When the first train arrived here in 1846, there were no cars. Today, the love affair with the car on the wane, Amboisiens leave it behind and take the train to Tours, Blois, Orleans, Lyon, Bordeaux, Aix-en-Provence, Strasbourg, Nantes and Paris. From Paris, the train will take you anywhere you want to go in Europe.