Take a garden belonging to a repudiated Queen ... when she dies (1615), break up the land, start building administrative offices on some parts (1708)
Turn one part of the garden into an Administrative Palace (1810)
Burn this Palace down during yet another French revolution (1871), and build a train station in its stead (1900):
Turn that station into a swimming pool (2nd floor shown here, during the 1910 floods - cannot see them well, but there are 2 trains here on 1st floor tracks, completely submerged in water):
Get Orson Welles to shoot the ancestor of Brazil inside the now defunct station (station dock too short for modern trains):
Eventually, turn the ex-station into a Museum (1977-1986):
And ... open up a website: http://www.musee-orsay.fr/
BTW, can you or another parisien(ne) help me out?
Double-checking Leipzig's claim to the widest European station, I was looking for size data and track maps of the main Paris stations (especially Gare Montparnasse and Gare du Nord), but found only one (for Saint-Lazare). If you can't find me some more, then could you at least explain me this (from the French Wiki):
Enfin, en 1994, l'arrivée des trains Eurostar impose une réorganisation des voies ainsi: * quais 1 et 2 : quais de service, non accessibles aux voyageurs. * quais 3 à 6 : terminal Eurostar vers Londres via le Tunnel sous la Manche. * quais 7 et 8 : quais Thalys vers la Belgique, les Pays-Bas et l'Allemagne. * quais 9 à 29 : TGV Nord, trains Grandes lignes, puis TER de Picardie. * quais 30 à 40 : gare de banlieue. * quais 41 à 44 (en sous-sol) : gare RER.
* quais 1 et 2 : quais de service, non accessibles aux voyageurs. * quais 3 à 6 : terminal Eurostar vers Londres via le Tunnel sous la Manche. * quais 7 et 8 : quais Thalys vers la Belgique, les Pays-Bas et l'Allemagne. * quais 9 à 29 : TGV Nord, trains Grandes lignes, puis TER de Picardie. * quais 30 à 40 : gare de banlieue. * quais 41 à 44 (en sous-sol) : gare RER.
Now, the RER platforms, that's Magneta station, right? But what about platforms 30-40 - are they on a second level underground, or perhabs some tracks have multiplew numbers? Or are numbers left out? (On a satellite map I looked at in the end, I only count 29 tracks - some outside the halls.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I did a few lookups to find some info on Parisian stations, and didn't come up with much, but I at least found this really detailed map of every station on the Paris-Lyon line ... but many many decades ago:
Paris Gare de Lyon pic (large TIF): http://fc.martinthouny.free.fr/Paris-lyon/profils/Page12.TIF
And the root of all pics: http://fc.martinthouny.free.fr/Paris-lyon/profils/page_01.htm
I'll see if I can find something later.
I ask because I wasn't. From satellite maps it appears to me that not all tracks of Gare du Nord are in the hall, only 16 - but maybe what I see east of the old hall is built over the extension of the eight other tracks? But for Leipzig, it's certain all tracks are under the halls. (There are a number of stations that have more tracks than Leipzig only with not all tracks covered. For example, Munich [32 tracks + 2 underground], or Paris Gare de l'Est [30 tracks]. But in meters, Leipzig Hbf's width beats the latter, too.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
