PARIS | RER & Suburban Rail

Thanks for sharing the pictures!

Here's my humble collection of three RER photos:

Auber (RER A):




Aéroport Charles de Gaulle 1 (RER B):




Magenta (RER E):

Nice travelogue of RER-travel!

What an international crowd that is!Plus your trains run much, much, much more frequently than ours here and are much more modern.....

The crowd sometimes dominates those photos. --> Turning off the flash makes better station photos...

Great RER pics, thanks! Paris rail is always good.

I once travlled in it, was a bit scary. Of course i travelled at around midnight or so.

Great serie kay:

micro said:

The crowd sometimes dominates those photos. --> Turning off the flash makes better station photos...

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Yeah I'm sorry about this. Actually, as I don't have a camera so I've just borrowed one to a friend, and I didn't know exactly how to use it.

Obviously, either I was turning the flash on and the picture appeared very dark (because all those stations are huge)... or I was turning the "panoramic option" on and my pictures appeared blurry. I totally admit the fact I'm not a good photographer.

I've taken all those pictures yesterday morning though. I wanted to show different aspects of the RER. That's maybe the reason why I've insisted more on quantity than on quality.

Here is a much cleaner picture of Haussmann - St-Lazare station of the RER E.
I haven't taken that picture, but as it's far better than my pathetic amateur attempts I still post it :

Nice looking system I guess, though it looks a bit gloomy.
How far out from Central Paris do these RER services run?

Metropolitan said:

Yeah I'm sorry about this. Actually, as I don't have a camera so I've just borrowed one to a friend, and I didn't know exactly how to use it.

Obviously, either I was turning the flash on and the picture appeared very dark (because all those stations are huge)... or I was turning the "panoramic option" on and my pictures appeared blurry. I totally admit the fact I'm not a good photographer.

I've taken all those pictures yesterday morning though. I wanted to show different aspects of the RER. That's maybe the reason why I've insisted more on quantity than on quality.

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Please don't misunderstand my criticism, I'm glad that you posted your pics!!

micro said:

Please don't misunderstand my criticism, I'm glad that you posted your pics!!

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Oh no, there's no problem !

Actually, I must also confess that it's true some of those stations are rather dark. I think for instance about the RER C at St-Michel. But that doesn't explain everything.

MelbourneCity said:

Nice looking system I guess, though it looks a bit gloomy.

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That's to do with the photography more than the stations. When I was last on the RER I never found them gloomy.

I'm not knocking Metropolitan's photography though, it's really hard to take good shots inside a crowded underground station. Obviously the best solution is to set up a tripod, but station staff are usually really against that. Unless you have a written document to show official approval, you would be most likely told to pack up and in some cases in many cities they may take your film or ask to delete your digicam.

The other option, and most common then is to rest the camera discretely on some steady surface to allow a long exposure without flash, or to use a very high ISO and held held. For best results, resting on a steady surface and long exposure is more ideal, it allows many of the passengers to fade away as they move (adding "movement" to the photo's).

I havn't actually tried underground station shots for ages, not since my film days.

Metropolitan's shots were still a great tour of the network.

Yeh nice photos. Good to see some variety and info on a network that would have gone ignored.

Justme said:

That's to do with the photography more than the stations. When I was last on the RER I never found them gloomy.

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Indeed. In my first pictures, I didn't know how to remove the automatic flash. Auber station seems very obscure.... but that's mainly because the flash was on.

I'm not knocking Metropolitan's photography though, it's really hard to take good shots inside a crowded underground station. Obviously the best solution is to set up a tripod, but station staff are usually really against that. Unless you have a written document to show official approval, you would be most likely told to pack up and in some cases in many cities they may take your film or ask to delete your digicam.

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If only I used more time to take each pictures, I could have taken better shots in posing the camera in order to increase the exposure without getting the pictures blurry. I wanted to go fast, to take various pictures of the network, I didn't think a lot before taking the pictures.

It was the first time I was taking that kind of pictures. Now I'm more experienced for the second time.

The other option, and most common then is to rest the camera discretely on some steady surface to allow a long exposure without flash, or to use a very high ISO and held held. For best results, resting on a steady surface and long exposure is more ideal, it allows many of the passengers to fade away as they move (adding "movement" to the photo's).

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Yeah, that's what I should have done indeed.

I havn't actually tried underground station shots for ages, not since my film days.

Metropolitan's shots were still a great tour of the network.

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Thanks. That was actually its first purpose. The RER is very rarely photographed, outside maybe the two brand new stations of the RER E, Magenta and Haussmann.

At first I've made long research on the internet to find RER pictures, but it's very hard to find decent pictures. So I've decided to take it in picture, at the rush hour in the morning. My purpose was actually to make people live what I've lived during my whole school years, when I was taking RER A and B to go to school.

nice pics

I still don't really understand what the RER is.
What's the difference between RER and the Metro? Beside the ugly RER trains.

Forza Raalte said:

I still don't really understand what the RER is.
What's the difference between RER and the Metro? Beside the ugly RER trains.

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The RER goes further in suburbs. It's a bit the same difference as U-Bahn and S-Bahn in Germany.

Actually, because of the regional policy in France (which is about ignoring the existence of suburbs) the RER is considered as "regional". Paris regular metro, on the other side, ends at the borders of the old city. That means that the RER goes even beyond Paris metro area, especially on line C and D, when there's actually no demand at all to go that far (It's what French people call "public services").

Anyway, the RER is actually the only link between Paris and its suburbs (which are by the way denser than is London). There's no need to wonder why there are riots in Paris suburbs when we see how they are treated.

Some better looking pictures of the RER :


Magenta RER station.


Haussmann RER station.


Haussmann RER station.


Magenta RER station.