The Breil railway facilities – commissioned in 1928 – were calibrated for the important cross-border passenger and freight traffic happening then.
All the buildings built for the Paris – Lyon – Méditerranée (PLM) company during the 1920s are characterized by a standardization that gives it an architectural identity that can be read in the landscape.
On the one hand, we can see the buildings “à la niçoise” that combine simplicity of volumes and declination of standardized elements: dimensions of doors and windows, tiled roofs, large windows of cantilever frame docks. Reinforced concrete, semicircular arches of large bays, as well as guardrail terraces in terracotta trellises and pergolas are available in a variety of ways in railway stations, and more formally on the houses of guards or traveler shelters. The red ocher paintings of the façades and the green moss of the joinery complete the identification of the constructions.
The hangars adopt the modernist form of large semicircular vaults of reinforced concrete; with side canopies cantilever reinforced concrete and large ventilation skylights at the top.
The topography of the Roya Valley has imposed the implementation of spectacular structures, which gives a monumental character to this single-track line, and complicates its maintenance. The viaducts crossing watercourses and steep slopes also have a signature recognizable by their retaining arches and their clear limestone facings.