About this journey

Narbonne station opened on 22 April 1857 and sits at a three-way junction where routes to Toulouse, Nîmes, Perpignan, and Spain converge — a layout complex enough that some trains bypass the station entirely via a curve connecting the Toulouse and Perpignan lines. The Z54900 REGIOLIS departs westward along the Ligne de Bordeaux-Saint-Jean à Sète-Ville, a railway built by the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi, founded in 1853 by Émile Pereire and his brother Jacob. The Bordeaux–Toulouse section opened in 1856 and was extended through to Sète the following year; the line through Narbonne was electrified as early as 1935.

At the western end of the journey, Toulouse-Matabiau station anchors a six-branch star network of regional and national lines. Its current passenger building, designed by Marius Toudoire and constructed between 1903 and 1905, replaced an earlier and smaller structure; the facade carries 26 coats of arms representing the 26 destinations the Midi railway originally served. The journey moves from a Mediterranean junction station rooted in the mid-nineteenth century to a Beaux-Arts terminus that has stood at the centre of south-western France's rail network for over a century.