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“The law of 11 June 1842 establishing the French railroad system was passed in the same year as a train accident killed forty persons on the short line to Versailles. The controversial new legislation provided government guarantees to private investors, as well as state aid for the construction of a rail network radiating out from Paris. The law of 11 June also sparked a railway boom that attracted investors and was popular with the public. A second railway bill was passed in 1846, promising additional expansion. The father of the teenage artist Gustave Dore, for example, was a state- trained and -paid civil engineer assigned to survey the route of a future line between Lyon and Geneva. (...) ...during the 1840s writers such as George Sand began to predict that the commercial impact of the railroad would quickly destroy the local customs and traditions that still regulated the culture of most of rural France.” — Robert J. Bezucha