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TGV La Poste at the Conflans shops near Paris Gare de Lyon. These yellow TGV trainsets are owned by the French postal service and serve to carry mail. October 1997 photo.

Photo by Benoît Géhant (bgehant@ese-metz.fr)

The French postal service owns three and a half TGV trainsets, with the extra half trainset stored as a spare. Given that trainsets are articulated, one might wonder how a "half trainset" is possible. This photo shows how it is done, with a special bogie that supports the free end of the last trailer. Heavy equipment and mechanical work is necessary to integrate this half-trainset with the remaining good half of a failed trainset.

Photo by Damien Deray (deray@infonie.fr)

TGV La Poste at Villeneuve St-Georges shops.

Photo by Yann Nottara (ynottara@mail.dotcom.fr)

TGV La Poste at Villeneuve St-Georges shops. The power car is not coupled to the trainset in this shot, but is identical to the original PSE units except for the yellow paint.

Photo by Yann Nottara (ynottara@mail.dotcom.fr)

TGV La Poste at Villeneuve St-Georges shops. The large plug doors replace the conventional doors. Rubber stripping protects the sides against impacts from mail carts during loading and unloading.

Photo by Yann Nottara (ynottara@mail.dotcom.fr)

TGV La Poste at Villeneuve St-Georges shops. The bogies on the postal trainsets have a unique design of pneumatic secondary suspension that is a precursor to the SR-10 pneumatic suspension that was retro-fitted to the entire PSE fleet in the early 1980s.

Photo by Yann Nottara (ynottara@mail.dotcom.fr)

TGV La Poste at Villeneuve St-Georges shops. End view of the first trailer, showing standard buffer and screw link coupler. The fat cables are for routing traction power to the traction motors on the first bogie (only PSE trainsets and Eurostar have this feature). At the top is the 25kV power cable which runs along the top of the trainset, linking the power cars at each end.

Photo by Yann Nottara (ynottara@mail.dotcom.fr)

The French postal service issued this commemorative stamp on the first day of TGV postal service, 1 October 1984.

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