FRANCE Playing with Trains for Profit

Flattened by wave after wave of inflation and devaluation, many French men have developed a peasantlike distrust of stocks, bonds or paper money -and an earthy passion for material goods. These fears and desires are being profitably exploited by two French businessmen who are giving their country men something as good as gold (which Frenchmen still hoard to the extent of $5 billion) to sink their savings into. The entrepreneurs' basic idea: buy your own railroad car.

Men Will Be Boys. This unique bit of entrepreneurism was conceived eleven years ago by Jean-Pierre Bruggeman, 44, and Jean Thomachot, 39, then French wine merchants in Algeria. They discovered that there was more money to be made in casks for shipping than in the wine. Extending the idea, they founded an investment company called Algeco to buy up railroad tank cars at prices ranging from $7,000 to $26,000, then leased the cars to oil companies and skimmed off 20% of the revenue as a management fee. Today Algeco owns more than 8,000 tank cars that haul everything from crude oil to liquid gas all over Europe. Thanks to generous depreciation write-offs and almost constant use of the cars, the investors who own individual railroad cars earn 10% to 12% annually on their money.

Bruggeman believes that playing with trains has a deep appeal for men: "The investor extends his childhood dreams by first buying an oil car, then adding a liquid gas car, then one for chemicals, and finally an automobile transporter." Many multicar families among Algeco's 6,000 investors have their names engraved on the sides of their railroad cars and often appear at the company's offices off the Champs Elysees to check on the location of their cars. Co-Presidents Bruggeman and Thomachot encourage this personal interest by inviting visiting investors to "drop by for a whisky and tete-a-tete."

30 Years to Wait. Algeco has been so successful that it has branched into other fields, invested $100 million of its shareholders' money in such tangibles as vending machines, trailer trucks and real estate. Last week Thomachot roved the Riviera for what Algeco calls the "investments of the future"-land that can be made into marinas, golf clubs and vacation villages. Algeco already manages a three-chateau country club outside Paris, an all-year golf course in Lavandou and a 1,500-yacht marina in the bay of Saint-Tropez. Not long ago, it began selling individual lots in France to investors for $600 apiece, then constructing garages, apartments and office buildings on the lots.

In one of its newest offshoots, Algeco is also offering investors parcels of freshly seeded forest land for $800. Though the investor must wait 30 years for his trees to grow up, Algeco's executives claim that each parcel by then should be worth more than $4,000 -which, they point out, is enough to provide a fetching dowry for a daughter.

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