Train des Pignes

This narrow-gauge railway was built a size too big for its own trains.

When the line from Nice up the valley of the Var was finally approved, France and Italy were on bad terms, and the army set conditions. In 1889 the loading gauge was widened to 4.50 metres so that military engines could pass, the stretch from Nice to Saint-Martin-du-Var was to carry an extra rail for standard-gauge trains, and the formation and the bridges were built wide enough for a main line. The company laid metre-gauge track on it, chosen for its tight curves, and that is what runs today: modern railcars on a narrow track, through tunnels and over viaducts made for something larger.

The Chemins de fer de Provence run 151 kilometres from Nice to Digne-les-Bains, finished in 1911 and known to everyone as the Train des Pignes. Three services a day run its length in about three hours and twenty minutes, climbing from the Var past perched villages and Vauban's fortress at Entrevaux, under the Colle-Saint-Michel to a summit of 1,023 metres, and down to Digne. On set days from May to early November a steam train runs between Puget-Théniers and Annot. Since a tunnel collapsed at Moriez in 2019, the last stretch from Saint-André-les-Alpes to Digne has been a coach; the operator expects trains to run through again in spring 2027.

Trains leave from Nice CP, the line's own station a few hundred metres from Nice-Ville. It opened in 1991; the old Gare du Sud beside it, whose glass roof came from the Russian pavilion of the 1889 Paris exhibition, is now a library. For its first forty minutes the train is a suburban service, calling at a string of stops through the suburbs of Nice and out to Colomars and Plan-du-Var. At many of the halts along the line it stops only on request: wave at the driver from the platform. Nice's other line into the mountains, the SNCF's Train des Merveilles to Tende, leaves from Nice-Ville.

Up the Var

Beyond Plan-du-Var the valley narrows and the railway keeps close to the river, crossing it and its tributaries on iron bridges, among them the 40-metre span over the Cians. Villars-sur-Var and Touët-sur-Var hang above the track on their rocks, and at Puget-Théniers, where the steam train is kept, the valley opens out. Six kilometres on comes Entrevaux, its walls running up the rock to the citadel.

Into the mountains

After Annot the line climbs the valley of the Vaïre. It turns through a helical tunnel at Le Fugeret, passes Méailles on its rock and crosses the Guillaumasse viaduct, then enters the 3,457-metre tunnel under the Colle-Saint-Michel. A plaque at its mouth remembers the workers, many of them Italian, who dug it between 1900 and 1903. The train comes out at the summit of the line, 1,023 metres up, in the upper valley of the Verdon, and runs down by Thorame-Haute to Saint-André-les-Alpes at the head of the Lac de Castillon.

On to Digne

From Saint-André the railway descends by Moriez and Barrême along the Asse to Digne-les-Bains. For now that last stretch is a coach, which calls at Moriez, Barrême, Chaudon-Norante, Chabrières and Mézel on the way.

The trains and the name

The everyday trains are AMP 800 railcars, the Autorails Métriques de Provence delivered from 2010, built on the same principles as the AMG 800s of the Corsican railway. A few of the older CFD railcars of the 1970s still work the line, and the trains run on biofuel. The steam train is worked by volunteers with E 211, a Portuguese Mallet tank of 1923.

Nobody agrees where the name Train des Pignes comes from. The best-known story, as the operator tells it, is that the steam trains were so slow that passengers could step down and gather pine cones, pignes, beside the track.

Between Saint-André-les-Alpes and Digne-les-Bains the service is a coach while the Région rebuilds the Moriez tunnel and the line beyond it; the operator expects trains to run through to Digne again in spring 2027. The coach runs at the times below and does not stop at Saint-Jurson, Golf de Digne, Gaubert or Plan d'eau des Ferréols. Three services a day run the whole way, every day of the year; groups of ten or more must book ahead.

Nice to Digne-les-Bains

On Sundays and public holidays from May to October, train 15 leaves Nice at 08:40 and runs to Saint-André-les-Alpes, at Puget-Théniers 10:14 and Annot 10:44.

Digne-les-Bains to Nice

Between Nice and Colomars or Plan-du-Var there are up to 31 trains a day in each direction. Track work between Nice and Colomars from 19 to 26 October 2026 changes some of these times.

The steam train

On set days from 3 May to 7 November 2026 the steam train leaves Puget-Théniers at 11:00, calls at Entrevaux at 11:15 and reaches Annot at 12:05; it returns from Annot at 15:30, reaching Puget-Théniers at 16:15. From Nice, train 1 arrives at Puget-Théniers at 09:23 and, on Sundays, train 15 at 10:14; trains 14 and 6 leave Puget-Théniers for Nice at 16:52 and 19:34.

Times as of October 2026, from the Chemins de fer de Provence timetable valid from 1 September 2026 and the steam train's schedule (opens in a new tab). Check the day's service on the operator's traffic page (opens in a new tab) and timetables (opens in a new tab).

The line is part of the Région Sud's ZOU! network, so tickets are ordinary ZOU! tickets: an e-ticket from the ZOU! online shop (opens in a new tab), or a ticket from the stations along the line. The fare depends on the distance between your two stops. Children under four travel free and those from four to eleven pay half; a mini-group ticket takes 30 to 50% off for three to nine people travelling together, and the Carte ZOU! Malin, at €20 a year, takes 30% off for you and one companion. Between Nice and Le Chaudan, Nice's Lignes d'Azur bus tickets are valid too.

The steam train is ticketed separately by the volunteers who run it, online or on board, with reduced fares for children up to eleven and for groups of fifteen or more. Prices as of October 2026.

Interrail passes are not valid. Interrail's table of railway companies lists the Chemins de fer de Provence among the trains in France that the pass does not cover, so pass holders buy an ordinary ticket.

The regional pass that does work is the Pass Sud Azur Explore: unlimited travel for 3, 7 or 14 days on the buses, trams and trains of the Alpes-Maritimes and Monaco, from €35, including the Chemins de fer de Provence within the zones you choose. It is a pass for the Alpes-Maritimes, and Entrevaux and everything beyond it lie in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, so check the zone map before relying on it past Puget-Théniers. It pays if you are staying around Nice and riding the lower line more than once; for a single trip to Annot or Digne, a ZOU! ticket is the simpler buy.

Checked October 2026 against Interrail's table of railway companies (opens in a new tab) and the operator's Pass Sud Azur Explore page (opens in a new tab).

The line threads a string of villages that were frontier posts, market towns and spa towns long before the railway came, and most of them are a short walk from their stations. Entrevaux and Annot are both on the steam train's run, so a day out of Nice can take in one of them on the way.

Nice is an easy day return, but the morning train and the steam train together make Annot a good place to stop: it is the steam train's terminus and a base for walks in the sandstone above it.

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