A visit to the national Italian railway museum at Pietrarsa
The first railway line in Italy went from Corso Garibaldi in Naples to the Royal Palace of Portici. The 7.25 km Naples–Portici railway was commissioned by King Ferdinand II of Bourbon, the king of the Two Sicilies. The route was inaugurated on October 3, 1839. Taking account of its importance - it connected the king’s palace in Portici with the city center in Naples, the kingdoms most important, but notoriously rebellious biggest city - it was double-tracked right from the beginning. Bayard and Vesuvio, both 2-2-2 locomotives for passenger traffic, were imported from Longridge and Co Ironworks of Bedlington in England and were about the first steam locomotives in Italy. The same company built the “Arend”, the first steam locomotive of the Netherlands. The rolling stock was built locally. Already after 2 month later, by the end of 1839, the railway had carried 131,116 passengers. It was extended to Castellammare di Stabia in 1842 and Nocera in 1844.
The entrance to the station in Napoli Centrale
The original 1839 track is still active today and currently forms the western section of the modern Naples–Salerno line. Along the line, in the outskirts of Naples, Pietrarsa Workshops were established to maintain the rolling stock of the line. Today, the National Railway Museum occupies the foundry, part of the former workshop at Pietrarsa.
One of the entrances to the underground world of Napoli Centrale
For somebody intent to visit a country by rail it is obligatory to visit the railway museum. Modern Italian rail-traffic has lost many of its national particularities. The quest for European standardization, as desirable as it might be for the ease of international traffic, has introduced multiple units which seem to be the same between Gdansk and Marseilles, while station buildings and layouts with typical design disappear with a terrible speed in favor of high platforms, inadequate shelters and anonymous online services. The museum will make clear what is lost.
Platform of the metro line at Napoli Centrale
From Naples it should not be a problem to get there – the museum is right next to the station of Pietrarsa-San Giorgio a Cremano on the original route of Italy’s first railway line. It is now part of the main route between Napels and Salerno. However, at the moment there is a problem. Only the trains of Naple’s Metro line 2 from Pozzuoli uses the line as far as the station of Naples San Giovanni Barra, one stop short of the museum. After San Giovanni Barra the line is closed for rail traffic. From San Giovanni Barra, a bus should continue for those intrepid travelers who want to go beyond, in the direction of Salerno.
One of the marshalling yards at the entrance to Napoli Centrale
Full of hope I proceed to what is called Napoli Piazza Garibaldi station, the name the underground bowels have got to be distinguished from big Napoli centrale station on the ground above. Next to two metro lines also the trains of the various lines of the Circovesuviana narrow gauge railway leave from here. The metro of Napoli is operated by the Italian railways FS and non-distinct from their ordinary suburban trains. Once you have found the entrance, payment can be done by “tap and tap”, you hold your bankcard at the reader to get in and later, hopefully, again, to get out, otherwise the system does not know how far you went and will charge you with the maximum amount. Corresponding announcements are made on the trains, however, they do not disclose what the maximum amount will be.
Napoli Gianturco station
The low, confined spaces in these underground bowels are full of people. It is Sunday morning and an expectant atmosphere of a day on the beach is prominent. Mostly young people chatter excited and loudly. When I reach the entrance ports they are guarded by a couple of employees of the Italian railways FS. The electronic ports are out of order and therefore “tap and tap” does not work. Since the employees cannot read QR codes or chips everybody is required to buy himself a paper copy of a ticket from one of 4 FS ticket machines in the area. All of them are surrounded by big groups of excited youngsters who cannot wait to get to the beach. Getting a ticket there will take some time. I think it might be better to go upstairs into the main station concourse and look for a ticket machine there.
Napoli Gianturco
However, ten meters further on and just out of sight of the human ticket controllers at the entrance ports to the platform, I discover a sign pointing to the elevator for platform 2. No gates have to be passed to get to the entrance doors of the elevator. I take the lift down to the platform. At the bottom, the entrance gates are open and no human watch-dog is on guard. It is only two stops from here to San Giovanni Barra station. When the train comes I take the risk and travel without a ticket.
One of the many little ports visible during the train ride along Napoli bay if the train is riding
It takes the train the surprising amount of 15 minutes for the short ride of two stops. When I exit at San Giovanni Barra I am surrounded by a suburban wasteland. To the right of the new platforms are industrial ruins, stone buildings where only the facades are left standing, the roofs all collapsed, everything overgrown with weeds and trees. This also was part of the extensive railway workshop but did not have the luck to find a new destination as a museum.
The Napoli metro, an ordinary train
To the left is a big open space where somebody has started an initiative to create a kind of parkland. Concrete borders have been placed and walkways paved, but then the landscaping has stopped. The users have created their own, short cut pathways over the wild, sun-burnt prairie littered with stray garbage. The backdrop is formed by an assembly of buildings which would be considered a slum in other countries but is an ordinary residential neighborhood here. The remaining space is taken by an enormous parking lot, where a handful of white long distance busses wait.
This is where I meet Giovanni. He is my age, lives in Portici, the original terminal of the kings first railway, and, like myself, wonders, which of these busses will continue in our direction. We approach the driver of a bus parked in the right direction but he points at one of the other busses. Their drivers don’t seem to know why they are here either. However, one of them points at a couple of containers which we had overlooked so far. They form an information booth manned by a friendly girl. She affirms that there should be a bus towards Salerno at 10 am.
The barren park area outside San Giovanni Barra station
At 10 to 10 a bus arrives. People get off and walk towards the waiting trains at the platform. When we want to board, the driver stops us. He shows us his schedule. His next turn is at 12.30. He will wait here for more than 2 hours until he is allowed to continue his work. He sends us back to the girl at the information booth.
The bus stop at San Giovanni Barra
She is sure that there should be a bus every 20 to 30 minutes. The next one should arrive in due course. Since the traffic along the road to Salerno usually is congested, nobody knows how long the trip actually will take. In addition the main road through San Giovanni a Teduccio, the name of this collection of industrial and residential ruins, is closed and the bus has to take a detour.
The boiling information container
While we wait, Giovanni tells me that this is daily business here. The railway seems to be closed regularly and then the trains are replaced by busses, which have no reliable schedule and nobody knows where they actually stop. He is very surprised when I tell him that I had similar experiences before in Rom, and, that it is no different at home, in Germany. He tells me that, when he was young, he had a German girl-friend, who studied in Würzburg. He went there every couple of month to visit her. At the time everything seemed to work perfectly there. Well, I guess, things can change.
Main street, San Giovanni a Teduccio
In Campania, according to him, it is the worst. Everything is run-down and construction works, if they start, are never finished. He blames it on politics, not the local, but the national politicians. Money is squandered or disappears.
The hot narrow canyons of San Giovanni
Meanwhile a bus has arrived. We board. Another guy, an honest American obviously, asks about a ticket. The driver tells him to buy it online. I don’t make public that I don’t have one either and the driver does not ask for a ticket. Instead he takes off right away, searching for a route avoiding the blocked main street of San Giovanni. The pavement is in a horrible state. The bus creaks and shakes while the driver does his best to avoid the worst potholes and slow down when that is not possible. After a couple of turns we stand waiting in a long queue in front of a red traffic light. Giovanni points out that the railway museum is at the far side of the traffic light.
Typical street of a Napolitano suburb
I ask the driver whether I can get off here. It is faster to walk than wait for the progress of the bus. However, he refuses. He replaces the train, and the train does not stop outside a station to let people get on or off. I will have to wait.
A shrine of Mary can be found at most corners
The American guy is still looking to buy a ticket. On the phone it does not work. When he approaches the driver again, he looses his patience. Just sit down, he shouts.
The closed station of Pietrarsca
Eventually we pass the traffic light. The bus makes a left turn and then stops in the middle of the road to let me off since the actual bus stop is blocked by parked cars. I say hello to Giovanni and make my way across the abandoned railway tracks to the entrance of the national railway museum. To the right the platforms of the Pietrarsa-San Giorgio a Cremano station stop are barricaded off and inaccessible. However, the screen above the platforms still shows the scheduled trains and the ticket machines seem to be functioning. The screens are too far away to be legible and nobody can get to the machines to buy his ticket, for example for the bus, since the entrance is blocked by a fence.
Entrance to the national railway museum
Although it is still early in the morning it is hot. I am glad to enter the big hall of the museum which is a couple of degrees cooler. When they see my camera at the ticket counter, they require me to fill a form that I will not use the photos for commercial purposes. They even want to have my passport number on the form. All the others who record every detail with their telephones are left alone. I forget to ask a copy of the form as a souvenir.
The main hall of the museum, the former foundry
Main attraction of the museum is an impressive hall, where 26 steam engines and some three phase electric engines are displayed on two rows of tracks on the two sides of a traverser. They represent the most complete collection of Italian motive power.
The museum displays a broad variety of engines, from humble shunting workhorses to noble express engines
Italy has no natural resources like reserves of coal or oil. The Italian railways had to look for inventive solutions to develop economic, fuel saving engines. Some of the most advanced developments for steam locomotives like Caprotti walve gear or Franco Crosti feedwater heaters were developed by Italian engineers.
An engine with Franco Crosti feedwater heater
While railway companies in Germany of the UK built steam engines until the end of the 1950ies, Italy stopped in the 1920ies. The available older engines were continued to be used and modernized when more advanced technology was available. New engines only arrived during the second world war from the US to replace material damaged or destroyed in the war.
Internal drive external walve gear engine
In many parts of Italy but in particular in Sicily and Sardinia, the standard gauge network was supplemented with a grid of narrow gauge lines. For these lines a track width of 950 mm was selected, a choice which was unique for Italy and was only copied for the railways in the few Italian colonies in Africa. A few of these lines, in Puglia and Sardinia, remain active today.
Narrow gauge rack engine type R370 built for Sicily
Some of the narrow gauge lines in Sicily were so steep that rack engines had to be employed. The FS Class R370 were 0-6-0 rack-and-adhesion steam locomotive built for the steep, mountainous rail lines in Sicily. However, the FS also had some standard gauge lines, were rack engines were necessary. The class 980 engines built by SLM in Switzerland from 1908 were used for the line to Volterra in Tuscany with an incline of ten percent and after 1912 for the Paola-Cosenza line in Calabria.
Separate drive and walve gear for the rack and adhesion cylinders
With the upcoming electrification the great water resources were seen as a convenient and cheap form of energy. The Italian railways started to electrify their lines in a rather early stage, but again with a rather unique solution of using three phase AC current which required very complicated catenary and pantographs, in particular at the points in stations. Eventually they concluded to replace this system by the more manageable, but meanwhile also outdated 3000 V DC power supply which is still in use today. It took until the 1970ies before the unique archaic three phase electric behemoths could be replaced. Until then they dominated the rails in Northern Italy, with Alessandria as their last stronghold.
Engines for three phase AC current
In the 1930ies the FS started with the production of a variety of railcars to make traffic on branch lines more economic. Steam engines then only had to be used for long passenger or for freight trains. Ansaldo-Breda and Fiat built several series of these railcars.
Aln 772, one of those typical cigars
Not only the technical solutions found for railways were typical, also the design of the locomotives was unique. Steam engines were shiny black with red wheels, elegant with conical firebox doors and sleek boilers. All the other material, coaches, electrical and later Diesel engines and railcars were painted in an elegant paint scheme of two tone brown. This gave the railcars their appropriate nickname, “cigars”.
Early Diesel engine
After the decision was taken to replace the three phase AC current and built lines electrified with 3000 V DC in the 1930ies the FS developed a limited number of modern electric locomotives which were omnipresent until the 1980ies. An entire era ended with the disappearance of these brown engines. The museum should show some representatives, however I cannot find them. Eventually, I realize that a part of the hall where the electric engines and railcars are displayed is blocked off. On the other side of a row of higher windows I see red pantographs. There are a couple of sliding doors, but they are closed. Out of pure habit I try one. It is locked. But the one next to it is open. It gives access to a little lobby used for storage, but behind there is another part of the big hall where the brown beauties wait behind scaffolding which probably never will disappear again. However, before I even get time to get my camera up, an ear splitting alarm goes off. I make my way out of closed area as quickly as possible. Fortunately there is a crowd of screaming little critters running around here without boundaries imposed by their guardians. It is easy to blame them for their intrusion into the forbidden sacred halls.
Railway design table in the cafe of the museum
In the museum cafe, where I hide from the ongoing noise of the alarm, I am the only guest getting the full attention of three employees in FS outfit. The choice is limited. However, my Americano is served in porcelain bearing the railroads logo, the tables are decorated with sketches of engines and the black heavy metal chairs have a golden FS emblem in the backrest. Unfortunately nothing comparable is available in the small museum store.
Segment turntable in the exterior area of the museum
The railway museum is right at the water’s edge. There is no indication when the next bus will leave towards the station at San Giovanni Barra. Despite the searing afternoon heat I decide to walk the distance of about 2 km. The main road is lined by buildings which look derelict, but are all inhabited. Nets are supposed to prevent loose parts of masonry from falling off the facade onto the few pedestrians on the narrow sidewalk but in particular from damaging the cars on the road. Votive shrines displaying images of Mary and the baby at every other corner might help to avoid injury. The imminent danger from above does not prevent the tenants to escape their baking quarters and sit on chairs on the sidewalk in front of their doors. Behind their back I can peek through the gate into cave like, half subterranean hollows which receive natural light only through the open front door. I see worn-out sofas, dinner tables covered with plastic sheets, and above all, a television, always running at considerable volume. In many, the statue of a saint completes the interior.
Football and its heroes are everywhere in Naples
Next to them bags full of garbage waiting hopefully to be picked up sometime. Above the laundry is suspended from lines spun between facades and balconies. From others hang the blue and white flags of the local soccer club. Images of the greatest player of all times, Maradonna, are glued to the crumbling walls. A couple of police agents keep watch from the inside of their car, engine and air-conditioning running.
Garbage in the streets of San Giovanni
Half of the road is blocked for construction purposes. Although the other half is limited to one-way traffic the odd dare-devil tries to pass through anyway, thereby using gaps in the barriers of the construction site or the sidewalk to avoid the legal traffic in the opposite direction. Their girls, faces covered with over-sized sunglasses, decorate cool and disinterested the passenger seats. I take an alley down towards the sea, thereby exchanging the danger by falling parts of the building or reckless drivers for the shadow-less heat on a concrete coastal walkway.
The crowded beaches on a Sunday afternoon
To my right the abandoned railway track, to the left little beaches sheltered by breakwaters constructed from blocks of rock and concrete. Vertical surfaces are covered with graffiti, horizontal ones with garbage and tattoo covered bodies gleaming from sun protection. Some have brought their parasol or a stretcher. Only few take a dip into the calm water. Maybe the others are put off by the unknown content of the thick concrete pipes leading into the sea next to the beach.
Laundry dries fast in the scorching heat of the streets
The couple of refreshment kiosks playing loud music don’t attract me. I sit down on one of the graffiti colored concrete benches along the promenade, have a sip from my bottle filled with tepid water and eat an apple. A teenage guy passes by with a couple of girls and makes a remark about my frugal meal. My attention is fixed on the bouncing butts of the girls more accentuated then covered by their tiny bikinis.
The successful Napoli soccer team
Closer to the station of San Giovanni the coast is occupied by the ruins of abandoned industrial buildings. For the last bit of my walk I have to go back to the main road. When I reach the empty expanse in front of the station, a train back to Naples is ready for departure. However, before I succeed to get a ticket from the machine it is gone. The fare for a ride is 1.50 €. Not worth the risk to ride without a ticket.
The virgin protecting what is important in life
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