By facilitating the migrations of flocks and indirectly contributing to the fattening of lambs in the mountains, the railroad not only participated in re-organizing the migration of ovine livestock in France but also assisted in feeding rural and especially urban populations at the end of the 19 th century and up to the 1970s. The example of the "great migration" between Provence and the Alps allows us to confirm the importance of this means of transportation during a 'cycle' of slightly less than a century that later gave way to roads and trucks. These exchanges contributed to the affirmation of the great migration in Provence, with a complex set of participants and a geography that was largely reconstructed by the conquest of the Northern Alps thanks to the railway.
