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.