Gare d'Achicourt

The Achicourt station is a closed French train station on the Arras to Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise line, located in the commune of Achicourt, in the Pas-de-Calais department, in the Hauts-de-France administrative region. A simple bifurcation station put into service in 1876 by the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord, when the Doullens to Arras line was opened, it was completed by a passenger station in 1910; the latter was destroyed during the First and Second World Wars. Until its closure in 2011, it was a stopover of the Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF), served by TER Nord-Pas-de-Calais trains.

Established at an altitude of 70 meters, Achicourt station is located at kilometric point (KP) 192.740 of the Arras to Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise line, between the open stations of Arras and Marœuil. It is also located at KP 78.005 - between the closed Wailly station and the open Arras station - on the Doullens to Arras line, twinned with the first line between the Arras station and a point 2.24 km west-southwest of the Achicourt station.

The Achicourt bifurcation, on the line from Arras to Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise, went into service on May 15, 1876, when the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord (Nord) opened its line from Doullens to Arras.

At its meeting on August 18, 1909, the Departmental Council of Pas-de-Calais passed a motion, forwarded to the administration, for the establishment of a halt at Achicourt, at the junction of the Arras to Saint-Pol and Doullens to Arras lines. The councillors argued that trains already stopped for service at the bifurcation. What's more, the industrial revolution was transforming the commune of Achicourt: the proportion of peasants was falling, and railway workers were settling in the commune following the opening of the Paris-Lille line and Arras station in 1846. In a dispatch dated November 21, 1909, the Minister of Public Works informed the Prefect that he was awaiting the outcome of negotiations between the municipality and the Compagnie du Nord before submitting the creation of a stopping point in Achicourt for consideration. The municipality of Achicourt and the Compagnie du Nord reached an agreement that included the municipality taking over the financing of the project, which voted a subsidy of 4,120 Francs on March 10, 1910. The company set up the stop near the bifurcation station, with two platforms, each 100 meters long. At its meeting on May 18, 1914, the departmental assembly once again took an interest in this stopover, following a proposal by general councillor Jean Paris. Noting that all trains on the Arras - Doullens and Arras - Saint-Pol routes stopped at the junction for service purposes, but that a large number did not serve the stop, he asked that a new timetable be studied so that all these passenger trains could be made available to travelers likely to use the stop. The General Council adopted a resolution to forward this proposal to the Administration for study.

At the outbreak of World War I, the bifurcation station and rest stop were destroyed when the nearby bridge over the Crinchon was blown up by the Germans on the night of September 16-17, 1914. After the war, the commune twice asked for the station to be reopened, first in 1919 and then in 1925, because of the size of its population (4,000) and its proximity to Arras. Reconstruction of the railway installations led to the construction of several railway housing estates between 1921 and 1925 (on the initiative of Raoul Dautry) to accommodate the workforce, including the Pierre Semard housing estate near the stop. In 1927, the Compagnie du Nord rejected this request, arguing that before the war, the stop coincided with the railway junction. However, the latter, destroyed in 1914, was rebuilt in a new location

TrainStation data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).