The Pouey company, founded in the 1880s by a former employee of the Midi railway, filled a gap in the French market of the time by publishing a useful business handbook to freight tariffs. These annual handbooks are prized by modern historians because of the accurate, very up-to-date maps of the French railway system they contained.

Clive Lamming has put together this reprint of the maps for each Département from the 1933 edition of Pouey, each reproduced with a summary on the facing page of the situation in the Département and the changes (closures) that have taken place there since 1933. The maps are reproduced in colour, but reduced from the original to fit on an A4 page, and they are at the limit of legibility. All the same, there's a lot of very interesting information here about railways that have long-since disappeared: I'm sure this is something I'll often be referring to. ( )