R15026. A Class X3800 ‘Picasso’ diesel railcar at La Coupole on the The Chemin de fer Touristique de la Vallée de L’Aa (or Aa Valley Tourist Railway). This is a volunteer run heritage railway based at Arques in northern France around 49km (or 30½ miles) from the Channel Coast at Calais. It’s 15km ( or a bit over 9 miles) long and ends at Lumbres.
As well as Picasso railcars there are also loco hauled passenger carriages for which the motive power is a BB63000 B-B diesel-electric locomotive or a Polish Ty2 ‘Kriegslok’ 2-10-0.
Sunday, 28th September, 2005. Copyright © Ron Fisher 2025.
***More details of this line on Wikipedia:
fr-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Chemin_de_fer_tour...
***La Coupole (The Dome) is an old and disused chalk quarry World War II that was in the process of being converted to a V2 ballistic missile storage and launching site in 1943/4.
However, it was spotted by the RAF and extensively bombed by both the USAF and the RAF which rendered it unsafe. Construction work was halted which was just as well because the plan was to launch hundreds of V2s against London and southern England.
Many years later it was made safe and it is now a museum.
As usual, Wikipedia has all the gen:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Coupole 