A former railway ticket office at Saint-Ghislain Railway Station has found a new purpose as the new home of Belgian railway heritage and active-mobility association Chemins du Rail. The move brings the organisation closer to the railway heritage of the Borinage and strengthens its cooperation with Patrimoine Ferroviaire et Tourisme (PFT), also known as Toerisme en SpoorPatrimonium (TSP) or PFT-TSP.
Chemins du Rail, previously based in Namur, recently inaugurated its new premises at the station in the presence of Walloon ministers François Desquesnes (Les Engagés) and Valérie Lescrenier (Les Engagés), local representatives and representatives of NMBS / SNCB, PFT-TSP and its La Saga des Gares department.
The former ticket window has been given a new role under NMBS / SNCB’s La Vie en Gare initiative. It is now the Chemins du Rail information desk, offering information for visitors using the RAVeL network of walking and cycling routes developed on or alongside former railway and vicinal lines.
From ticket window to railway heritage centre
The choice of Saint-Ghislain is particularly significant for an organisation whose work revolves around the afterlife of Belgium‘s disused railway infrastructure.
Chemins du Rail campaigns for the preservation and conversion of former railway and vicinal lines into greenways, while also seeking to preserve the railway heritage associated with them. Its work includes former stations, bridges, tunnels, signals, markers and other remnants of railway operations.
The organisation also promotes connections between RAVeL routes and railway stations, creating opportunities to combine today’s railway network with former railway lines that have been transformed into walking and cycling routes.
Saint-Ghislain provides a particularly good setting for this approach. The station remains an active railway location, while the surrounding Borinage contains numerous reminders of the area’s industrial and railway past.
The new Chemins du Rail premises will therefore serve both today’s users of sustainable transport and visitors interested in the history of the railways that once served the region.
QR codes tell the story of former stations
The move also deepens the cooperation between Chemins du Rail and PFT-TSP’s La Saga des Gares project.
Historical information panels with QR codes are progressively being installed at the sites of former railway stations and stopping points along RAVeL routes. Scanning a QR code takes visitors to the La Saga des Gares website, where they can discover the history of the station or stopping point and the railway community that once surrounded it.
The concept turns former railway lines into something more than greenways. A cycle ride or walk can become a journey through the history of the railway network, with today’s path following the alignment of a line that may have disappeared decades ago.
The first RAVeL route to receive the new panels is the route developed on the former railway line 98 in the Borinage. The project will subsequently move to the Namur province, where the RAVeL along the former line 150 in the Molignée valley will receive similar panels.
Line 150 is particularly interesting from a railway heritage perspective. Opened in stages from 1875, the former railway connected the Namur region with the Meuse valley. Much of its former route has since become a RAVeL, allowing walkers and cyclists to follow the alignment of the historic railway. Chemins du Rail has described line 150 as a major example of railway heritage transformed into a modern greenway.
Keeping the memory of the railway alive
La Saga des Gares dates back to 1998 and focuses on bringing the history of former and present-day stations and stopping points back to life. It also documents the neighbourhoods around stations and the people who built and operated the railway.
The project is now part of Patrimoine et Tourisme and its documentation and archives department at Retrotrain, the former wagon workshop at Saint-Ghislain station.
The cooperation with Chemins du Rail therefore brings together two complementary approaches to railway heritage: the physical preservation and reuse of former railway infrastructure, and the documentation of the stations, railway workers and communities that once gave these lines their purpose.
A railway network with a second life
Chemins du Rail is a non-profit organisation dedicated to keeping disused railway and vicinal lines intact where possible and converting them into continuous greenways for non-motorised transport. It provides technical expertise to public authorities and the public, operates a documentation centre, publishes a quarterly magazine and organises discovery walks, cycling trips and other activities.
Its work illustrates how Belgium’s former railway network is increasingly being given a second life. Where trains once carried passengers and goods, former railway alignments can now carry cyclists and walkers. Former stations can become information centres, cafés, homes or community facilities, while railway structures and artefacts provide links to the industrial and social history of the areas they once served.
At Saint-Ghislain, that connection is particularly visible: an old railway ticket office has itself become part of this new chapter.
Rather than allowing the railway past to disappear, the Chemins du Rail and PFT-TSP partnership is using the former railway network to tell its own story, with today’s RAVeL users following the tracks of yesterday’s trains.
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