Tram de Hybouville is a rural steam tramway running from a junction with the SNCF (French National Railway) Coastal Line from Dieppe to le Treport at Bellengreville crossing the valley floor and the River Eaulne at Pont d’Eaulne before climbing through the Hybouville to St Nicolas d’Aliermont. Other stations are Bellengrevillette, St. Sulpice and Hybouville. Pont d’Eaulne et Travaux de Gravier is a halt on the north side and a rail served gravel works and siding on the south side of the River Eaulne. Using real water marks the importance of the river.
In practise the area developed without the help of a tramway. The Coastal line from Dieppe to le Treport did exist, it lost its passenger service in 1938. The eastern section closed to freight in 1973 and the route is now partly used as a footpath. The Western section through Bellengreville remains open but only for nuclear flask traffic. Bellengreville is a hamlet that never had a station.
St Nicolas d’Aliermont is famed for manufacturing clocks and remains industrially active with several factories three of them next to the theoretical location of the tramway's terminus. Had the Tram de Hybouville been built goods services might have survived into the 21^st Century and then it might have become a tourist railway!
Period                     Epoch III (1950-70 steam to diesel)
Special features       Working river and flooded gravel works – very rural secondaire (light) railway

French Secondaire

The secondaire railways are very roughly the French equivalent of light railways. They were developed to stimulate the rural economy particularly farming and graded general, local and tram, tram being the bottom of the pile. Funding came from central government, departments and communes (parish). Their history is both interesting and contradictory! They grew twelve fold between 1870 and 1912. At the end of 1912 an additional two and a half thousand kilometers were under construction or authorized but most of these were prevented from coming to fruition by the First World War. The War had a major impact on existing lines with war damage, deferred maintenance, mobilization of staff and the removal equipment, in certain cases entire railways. After the War secondaire continued to expand reaching their peek mileage in about 1925 with the last secondaire opening in 1928. Improving road transport meant the next decade was one of rapid decline. In 1938 the transport Co-ordination law caused many secondaire to closed or loose their passenger service. The Second World bought the same problems as the First but to already run down railways. Services on the lines that survived the 1938 law were as far as possible intensified and some freight only lines reintroduced passenger services. At the end of the War many lines were in a run down state and closed. By 1947 mileage was down to a third of it peek and by 1962 it was the similar to 1870.
Secondaires were built by concessionaries who built and operated the railway for a fixed term then hand it over to local authority. In British terms a Private Finance Initiative. Initially support was limited to capital guarantees, use of roads, and/or verges but increasingly subsidies had to be offered. This worked well until the secondaires became unprofitable and the concessionaries handed the concession to the local authority. An experience similar to the failure of some of the UK Train Operating Companies. This left the local authority, usually the Department, owning an increasingly unprofitable railway, the response was direct ownership or contracting out to companies specialising in running secondaires, the grands réseaux (major railway companies like the Nord), or after nationalisation the SNCF. The Tram de Hybouville has ended in the hands of the SNCF.