In the dark early morning, they cut into a fence protecting the high-speed rail line right outside the small town of Croisilles. Once past the fence, the culprits soldered open the metal protective cover of a culvert alongside the tracks. Then, they poured flammable liquid and set a fire, damaging around 40 cables, explained the local mayor, Gérard Dué.
Arsonists did not just strike there, 105 miles north of Paris. Around the same time, at 4 a.m., they struck cables along high-speed rail lines at one site east of the capital and another to the west.
In all three cases, their targets were precise: They chose signaling stations close to where the tracks split in two directions.
“We were in the dark on three of our principal lines in our rail network,” said Christophe Fanichet, the president of the national railway company’s passenger trains division, S.N.C.F Voyageurs.
Toiling in the rain, and often in the dark, rail workers managed the delicate task of repairing fiber optic cables. By Saturday morning, all trains rushing from Paris to the east were back on schedule, and seven of 10 trains heading north, west and southwest were running, albeit not at their full speed, which can reach 320 kilometers, or about 199 miles, an hour.
While claiming success in the face of terrible stress on the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Paris, the question facing rail workers still remains: Who did this and why?