On March 27 1970 SNCF closed the railway which ascends from Oloron Ste. Marie to Canfranc, following the derailment of a runaway freight train near the Pont d’Estanguet, to the south of Bedous. Thus ended the first `life’ of the central Pyrenean railway, which had been completed only four decades earlier, inaugurated on July 11 1928. With traffic, both freight and passenger, being sparse and
