The Improbable Dream

In the 1960s, the idea of a high-speed train seemed almost quixotic. The jet age had arrived, highways were expanding across Europe, and conventional wisdom held that rail was a dying 19th-century technology. Japan's Shinkansen, launched in 1964, had shown high-speed rail was possible, but many dismissed it as suitable only for Japan's unique geography and density.

France faced different challenges. The country was larger and less densely populated than Japan. Its historic city centers, built centuries before railways, made new track construction complex and expensive. Moreover, France's national airline, Air France, was a source of pride and didn't welcome competition on domestic routes.

Yet a small group of engineers at SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) saw an opportunity. Led by Jean Bertin, who had experimented with aerotrain technology, and later by engineers like André Ségalat and Marcel Tessier, they envisioned trains that could travel at speeds previously thought impossible on rails.

"We weren't trying to build a faster train," recalled Jacques Cooper, one of the original TGV engineers, in a 2019 interview. "We were reimagining what ground transportation could be. Every assumption was questioned, every component reconsidered."