to less than . Signalling was itself minimal because of the small number of journeys (generally six a day before the First World War, and a few infrequent freight trains each week, fewer after 1914). Road users were warned of level crossings by simple traffic signs saying , which in the 1930s were augmented by the Cross of St Andrew; never a barrier. Stations were built in the same style, of small dimensions: a little waiting room and, attached to it, a modest ticket hall leading to a platform long enough to serve the most populous locality. A simple shelter or just a signpost marked out halts or flag stops. Small trains The locomotives and other rolling stock also had a scaled-down appearance when compared with those of the larger networks. The steam locomotives were often tank engines, generally having three axles, with or without Bissel bogies front or rear. They were comparatively light, weighing from unladen. Later, petrol and diesel multiple units appeared as railbuses. Overall, these machines formed short trains of at most about a dozen small carriages or wagons, often far fewer. Routes were quite short, some tens of kilometres, with operational speed below . The slowness and rudimentary comfort of the secondary railways have passed into folk stories; anecdotes abound of unsavoury episodes, passengers getting off the train to push it up a steep hill, children hot-wiring cars to run alongside the breathing machine. Their users gave them nicknames: ("twisters"), ("bangers"), ("cuckoos"), (imitative, as on the Boisleux Marquion line), and so on. Author Marcel Proust refers often to one such train service in his novel Within a Budding Grove, always using the full phrase "le petit chemin de fer d'intérêt local" in French, literally translated as "the little train of local interest". See also Branch line Main French railcar builders\: Établissements Billard • De Dion-Bouton Main French VFIL locomotive builders: Corpet-Louvet • Pinguely Narrow gauge railway Notes References Sources Defunct railroads Narrow gauge railways in France Metre gauge railways in France Railway lines in France