French Rail-Can you decifer it?

Earlier this year, I took a mini road trip to Evansville, IN to check out the LST that is docked on the Ohio River. Pretty neat. Google LST 325 if your interested. On my way home, I stopped at Wright Patterson Air Force Museum to check out the new display in building 4. The XB-70. Such a cool plane. Anyways, I came upon a French rail car that carried POW's [In this display, WWII bomber crews] to camps [Along with "others"]. So I bent down and looked at the rail to look at the time stamp. This rail appears to be authentic. Can anybody decipher a French rail's time stamp?

Stenciling on the rail car:


Time stamp on the rail:


You an copy this post to another category if it doesn't belong here. Whatever works.

I googled "besseges" "steel" "france" and a lot of hits came up. Besseges is a town in southern France that historically (don't know about now) was a steel and coal center. One hit talked about Bessemer furnaces there. JS

SST wrote:....Can anybody decipher a French rail's time stamp?

My first guess would be April 1913 ("13" being the year and "IIII" the 4th month).

...FB

that is car markings , not rail.
car is part of thank you(merci) train which French donation one car for display to each state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merci_Train" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I thought French rail back then was of the bullhead type?

Nasadowsk wrote:I thought French rail back then was of the bullhead type?

Bullhead rail was a British thing, not normally seen on the Continent.