engineering

Tours station

Tours station is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tours station rather than just read about it. In short: Tours station (French: Gare de Tours) is a railway station serving the city of Tours, Indre-et-Loire department, western France. It is situated on the Paris–Bordeaux railway, the Tours–Saint-Nazaire railway, and the non-electrified Tours–Le Mans railway.

Key takeaways

Tours station belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tours station to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tours station from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Tours station (French: Gare de Tours) is a railway station serving the city of Tours, Indre-et-Loire department, western France. It is situated on the Paris–Bordeaux railway, the Tours–Saint-Nazaire railway, and the non-electrified Tours–Le Mans railway. The Gare de Tours is a terminus; most TGV trains only serve the nearby Gare de Saint-Pierre-des-Corps.

Location Established at a terminus at 49 meters above sea level, the Tours station is the origin of the line of the Tours–Saint-Nazaire railway and of the line from Tours–Le Mans railway. Not being located on the Paris-Austerlitz to Bordeaux-Saint-Jean line, Tours station is connected by two connections. The connection from Saint-Pierre-des-Corps to Tours in the direction of Paris-Austerlitz and the connection from Tours to Monts (branches of the Bordeaux line) towards Bordeaux-Saint-Jean. Until May 5, 1970, it was the terminus station of the Sables-d'Olonne line, whose route from the terminal was abandoned from Joué-lès-Tours station, in favor of a connection created between this last station and the line from Paris-Austerlitz to Bordeaux-Saint-Jean, south of Tours. The first station in the direction of Saint-Nazaire is that of Gare Saint-Genouph. In the direction of Mans, the first station open is that of Gare de La Membrolle-sur-Choisille, after that which is now closed at Fondettes - Saint-Cyr. In the direction of Paris-Austerlitz, the first station is that of Gare de Saint-Pierre-des-Corps and in the direction of Bordeaux-Saint-Jean, that of Gare de Monts.

History The first railway station for Tours (called L’Embarcadère) was built in 1846 by Phidias Vestier, on the site of the current Place du Général-Leclerc, Tours, like Orléans, having accepted service rail late. It is operated by the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans. The Vendée station, serving Les Sables-d'Olonne, was built on behalf of the Compagnie des chemins de fer de la Vendée in 1875, west of the first station. The current passenger building was built between 1896 and 1898 under the direction of tourangeau architect Victor Laloux, with four allegorical limestone statues of cities by Jean Antoine Injalbert (Bordeaux and Toulouse) and Jean-Baptiste Hugues (Limoges and Nantes). The purpose of this project was to merge the equipment of Paris-Orléans and the State Railways (which had acquired the Chemins de fer de la Vendée). It has been listed as a monument historique since 28 December 1984. Between the end of the 19th century and the Second World War, the railways and workshops of the railway companies occupied a large area of the city of Tours; these spaces were urbanized to form the districts of Sanitas and the Rotunda. As part of the construction of the first Tours tramway in 2013, annexes to the station were destroyed, as well as the buildings on the Rue de Nantes which linked the Rue des Aumônes to the Place du Général-Leclerc along the station. The Rue de Nantes is replaced by the tramway, while the west facade of the station is open to facilitate access to the new Gare de Tours station. In 2018, according to SNCF estimates, the annual usage of the station was 4,690,784 passengers and if non-passengers are included, its usage rises to 5,863,480.

Passenger Services

Welcome A SNCF station, it has a passenger building, with a ticket office, open every day and equipped with automatic ticket vending machines. It is equipped with 6 platforms serving 12 lanes. The platform serving tracks D and E, and the platform serving tracks F and G are more than 443 meters, making it possible to receive two SNCF TGV Atlantique trainsets.

Station

The building brings together four materials: stone (for the facade and its statues), iron (as the supporting structure), cast iron (especially for the decoration of the interior columns) and glass (with two large canopies on the facade to provide lightness and transparency). Four statues dominate the building. Two directed by Jean-Antoine Injalbert (allegories of Bordeaux and Toulouse), and two directed by Jean-Baptiste Hugues (allegories of Limoges and Nantes). The painted earthenware panels, produced between 1896 and 1898, are by Eugène Martial Simas. The Tours-Center station underwent a refurbishment of its interior and facade work in 2006. Gold leaf was thus laid, as the Laloux project initially planned. The refurbishment of the building continued until 2013. Thus, the interior layout was revised and openings were made to the west of the building to create a third entrance. At the same time, the large passenger hall was being restored with the metallic elements of the frame being re-painted; likewise, the zinc cover and the translucent cover (with polycarbonate in place of polyester) were redone.

Services The following services currently call at Tours:

regional services (TER Centre-Val de Loire) Tours - Blois - Orléans regional services (TER Centre-Val de Loire) Tours - Gièvres - Vierzon local services (TER Centre-Val de Loire) Tours - Loches regional services (TER Centre-Val de Loire) Nantes - Angers - Tours - Blois - Orléans local services (TER Centre-Val de Loire) Tours - Chinon regional services (TER Centre-Val de Loire) Tours - Vendôme - Chartres regional services (TER Pays de la Loire) La Roche-sur-Yon - Bressuire - Thouars - Saumur - Tours local services (TER Pays de la Loire) Angers - Saumur - Tours local services (TER Pays de la Loire) Le Mans - Château-du-Loir - Tours regional services (TER Normandie) Caen - Alençon - Le Mans - Tours

Other transport connections

The station is connected to the Fil bleu urban transport network, in particular line A of the Tours tramway, which came into service on 31 August 2013. On this occasion, new access was created on the west facade of the station (Rue de Nantes) to allow direct correspondence from the Salle des Pas Perdus. It is also in connection with line 2 Tempo which is a high level of service bus line (BHNS) and bus lines 3a / b, 5, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 34, 50, 100, 110, 112, 114, 117, 118, either directly in front of the station (Gare de Tours stop), or at the end of the forecourt, on Boulevard Heurteloup (Gare Vinci stop). Access to the Réseau de mobilité interurbaine (Rémi) is on the forecourt of the station at the rest area. School circuits organized by Communauté de communes or Syndicat intercommunal des transports scolaires (SITS) in neighboring municipalities also serve Tours station, at the rest area.

Freight This station is open to freight traffic.

References

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tours station

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tours station claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tours station before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tours station ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tours station

In research: Tours station appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tours station in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tours station is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 19th-century architecture in France, Buildings and structures completed in 1898, Buildings and structures in Tours, France, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tours station outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Tours station in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tours station means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tours station out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tours station in simple terms?

Why does Tours station matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tours station?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tours station.