INFOGRAPHICS. The most lost, the most recovered, the most affected stations …. All you need to know – franceinfo

You arrive at your vacation spot, you are about to go to the beach … But impossible to find your backpack in which you slipped your swimsuit! You look for it everywhere, in vain. You have to face the facts: your luggage remained in the TGV, under the seat where you had stowed it. Your mishap is far from being an isolated case.

Since the end of 2013, SNCF and its lost and found service thus recovered no less than 650,000 items left behind in trains or stations across France. To avoid this inconvenience, and thanks to the company database, franceinfo gives you some advice (more or less serious) to avoid losing your belongings, during this weekend of great return of vacationers.

Objects to keep an eye on

Unsurprisingly, luggage is by far the most lost items: bags and suitcases represent almost 30% of the various goods recovered by the SNCF. They are followed by electronic devices and clothing, respectively 14% and 13% of found objects. Apart from these categories, purses are also very often lost: nearly 60,000 of them have been recovered by SNCF over the past seven years. Beyond these great classics, more unusual objects are also lost in trains and stations. Since 2013, SNCF has recovered 8 sledges, 10 après-skis, 46 flutes, 50 walkers, 141 video projectors and 565 x-rays. You can really lose everything on a train, so watch out for your x-rays!

Asked by franceinfo, Sandrine Augereau, who works in the lost and found service of the SNCF, even remembers “from a person who made a statement to retrieve a forgotten toothbrush on a train”. Well the toothbrush in question has been found, assures the employee of the railway company.

Don’t lose hope of finding your stuff

The damage is done ? Has your suitcase been left on the train? As for the owner of the famous toothbrush, all hope of finding your property is not lost! One third of items lost in trains or stations find their owner. Be careful, behind this average, the articles are not all housed in the same boat. Musical instruments are the most recovered: 58% of them find their owners. The prize goes to violins, returned to their owner in 77% of cases.

Conversely, if you have lost your umbrella, a piece of jewelry or a watch, you have statistically only a 6% chance of recovering them. It is not much better for glasses, barely more than one in ten pairs will be able to find the nose of its original wearer. The best way to recover your object is still to label it, recommends Sandrine Augereau. “When someone declares the loss of a medium-sized black suitcase, unlabeled and without any distinctive sign, it is very difficult for us to find it”, emphasizes the lost and found employee.

When the object is recovered by its owner, the return is made in the majority of cases less than three days after the loss. However, some items are recovered much later: we count 55 items that were returned to their owner more than two years after their loss. These are cell phones, suitcases or even computers. The record is held by a wallet lost in 2015 in Annecy (Haute-Savoie), recovered after three years, 204 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes and 31 seconds! Small statistical curiosity: 55% of these objects found more than two years later were lost in… Toulouse. So never lose hope of finding your item, especially in Toulouse!

The stations where objects are lost the most

Beyond the case of Toulouse, the number of lost items varies widely depending on the station. The Gare de Lyon, in Paris, is where the SNCF lists the most lost objects, nearly 50,000. The Gare Montparnasse and the Gare du Nord complete a 100% Parisian podium. Nothing illogical since they are one of the busiest stations in France.

By crossing the number of lost objects with the number of travelers attending each station in 2019, we obtain a number of lost objects per 100,000 travelers and thus a ranking of stations with the highest number of lost objects compared to its attendance. In this game, the champion station of France for lost objects is Le Croisic, in Loire-Atlantique, with more than 300 lost objects for 100,000 travelers. It is followed by Hendaye, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, and Cherbourg, in the Manche. A tropism in the west which is confirmed when we widen to the top 10, since six of the stations that make it up are located on the west coast (Brest, Granville and La Rochelle in addition to the three previously mentioned). So if you are going to spend your vacation by the English Channel or the Atlantic, be careful when exiting the wagon!

Despite all these tips, no one is safe from a moment of bewilderment, and the best solution not to lose a precious object on the train is perhaps still … not to travel. In 2020, the Covid-19 health crisis and confinements led to a significant drop in rail traffic in France. And this drastically reduced the number of lost items: 47,351 items were left on trains or stations in 2020, compared to just over 90,000 on average in previous years.