Established by state order of the Third Republic on 25 May 1878 to take over ten small failing railway companies. In 18 November 1908, the État absorbed the Chemins de fer de l'Ouest and then in 1934 took over the Paris-Orléans company's lines in southern Brittany. At one point the company was operating in an area comprising all the territory west of a line extending from Dieppe by way of Paris to Bordeaux. On 1 January 1938 the État merged with the other French railway companies to form the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF). The État then took a seat on the SNCF's Board of Directors, as did all the other companies until 1982 when all traces of the constituents of the SNCF disappeared.