SIGNS OF A RAILWAY

Introduction

Once upon a time there was the railway, with its places, environment and atmosphere; in one word: its signs.

Signs of a railway are therefore the workshop, where the just repainted loco appears; the depot, where engines rest side by side; the small and tidy station with its crossover track, where two railcars make their appointment; the great arches of Central Station in Milan, where every train seems ready for an official portrait; and furthermore: the historical routes of the 18th century, like the Giovi line, near Genoa, which was revolutionary when it was built; the presence of the track inside the city, along the San Remo promenade, or even in the tangled suburbs of a large city, where the railway finds its way to the countryside.

Signs of the railway are the locos waiting to be pulled down, like the last threephase engines at the beginning of the 1980's, as well as the locos that have been travelling for half a century - the E.626, the E.636 - which still seem to bring the sign of their history into the present days.

Signs are the Centoporte, possibly the most typical Italian coaches; the X Type, with their essential design; the wonderful Elettrotreni, like the Settebello, whose withdrawing, or even pulling down, is really a thing that cries out for vengeance. A sign is finally the steam traffic, which is considered in the last photos, with the special trains of the present days as well as with the very last regular services, in early 1980's.

But the railway is even more! There probably does not exist another technological object that is so suitable to appear within a natural landscape; that is able to combine together technical requirements and human talent; that becomes a complementary element of the natural context in which it appears; that can interact very closely with urban planning, although it is not part of this discipline. That keeps all these features together. That's why whatever museum seems not to suit a locomotive: in a museum the locomotive has lost its world!

Since mid Eighties, I've been a witness of the Italian railway and of its evolution. I followed its playing with nature, considering myself half as an explorer, half as a pilgrim; I photographed its signs in the different Italian landscapes, in some of them with more attention and affection. This gallery is a report of all this, brought into the essential lines of black & white photography.

Chapter 1
Black & White along the Seaside

The railway in Liguria, Italian Riviera: since 140 years ago a simple track accurately follows the shape of the coast; cuts here and there its promontories, crosses the short planes that were densely cultivated up to few decades ago. The railway line is bound up with the sea in a surprisingly perfect way; it runs from the portal of one tunnel to the next, all made of the same stone of which the mountain is made.

It is likely that people who designed the railway from Genoa to Ventimiglia and La Spezia, between 1856 and 1874, were not aware of how equilibrated that work was, how correct the speed permitted by that route; they simply did what the technology of their time allowed and made economically profitable.

Nowadays, this railway becomes an attractive clue to the land of Liguria, to what it has been in history of tourism and what still is: a place that gets a deep and irrepressible charm from its nature and its villages. The original sections of railways that are still in service represent one of the few urban signs survived to the abnormal tourist growing. And the sea really represents the true reason of such a charm, even when we are simply observing the friendly outline of an E.656 hauling its train, along the beach or among the palms and the pinetrees of a promenade.