Marche-les-Dames station 050714

Marche-les-Dames station (Belgium), July 5th 2014

The station at Marche-les-Dames opened on November 18th 1850, the day the section Val Benoit - Namur was opened to traffic.  This line, part of the line Namur - Liège (current railway line 125, completed May 19th 1851) was originally built by the rather unimaginatively named Chemin de fer de Namur à Liège (Railway line from Namur to Liège), which, despite its French name, was actually British owned.  However, the line would not remain in British hands for long, as the Namur-Liège made huge losses and went bankrupt in 1854, after which it became part of the private operator Compagnie du Nord-Belge, which was a subsidiary of the French company Chemin de fer du Nord (Northern Railways).

While the Belgian state railways (pre-1926: État Belge; post-1926: NMBS/SNCB) used the famous Liège-Guillemins station (opened 1842) on the west bank of the Meuze river; the Nord-Belge used the less well-known Liège-Longdoz station on the east bank (opened 1851; closed and demolished 1960).  However, as a result of the Second World War, the Nord-Belge ceased to exist, and its lines and equipment were taken over by the Belgian state railways.  The line was electrified in 1970 (previously it was served by diesel trains).

The Marche-les-Dames station building is a weird mixture of styles.  While the station chief's home (on the right) can be dated back to the 1850s, the ticket hall is most definitely a post-war design, probably built during the late-1940s or early-1950s.  Ticket sales at the station were stopped in 1993; it has been an unmanned stop since.