If you happen to look at the map of Barcelona commuter trains, you can see that line R3 continues outside the suburban area to somewhere called La Tor de Querol – Enveig. If you were to take the unassuming train to its final destination, you would have left Barcelona and Spain altogether and ended up on the French side of the border high up on the plateau of Pyrenees, near Andorra.
There you would encounter an imposing station building, with the French version of that double-barreled name Latour-de-Carol – Enveitg. This station is a leftover from the time when borders had meaning and when you needed customs controls and change of trains at many borders. Europe has plenty of abandoned large border stations that no longer have any function, where high-speed trains whish past without stopping, and the passengers barely notice the station.
But Latour-de-Carol – Enveitg has avoided this fate. Not because of any local attractions, as the two villages of La Tour de Carol and Enveitg are sleepy, home to only 400 people, and thus do not need a large railway station – if any. However, the historical choices made by the French and Spanish railways mean that trains cannot swish past the station but must discharge their passengers, who – even though border formalities are long gone – need to change trains.
The reason for this is that each of the three train lines leading to Latour-de-Carol – Enveitg has different gauge. The Spanish trains from Barcelona use the Iberian gauge of 1668 mm, the French trains to Toulouse use the standard 1435 mm, and the mountain train to Villefranche-de-Conflent (where it meets again standard gauge track) uses 1000 mm which allows this touristy “Train jaune” to use tight bends on its way up the Pyrenees. Originally the point of this exchange station was to connect Paris to Barcelona via Toulouse, but these days the coastal TGV line takes care of that, and Latour-de-Carol – Enveitg serves mostly local and regional clientele, even though there is a direct Intercités train to Paris.
Thus the tourists that come to see the mountains, or to trek around, can take advantage of the scenic Train jaune, or the more prosaic suburban and regional services, and get to admire the station that is a leftover from a bygone age when borders still had meaning in Europe.
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