The great day is come !
It was a looooong time that no new line was opened, an in this case
the occourrence was even more important, since it was a reopening after
55 years of closure.
I Went on 9 january to Campo Marte to see the inaugural Train,
that was fully booked for authorities and press, to get some pictures.
The images that are on this page are for the most part of the Inaugural
Train. Of course, since I could not chase the train in all stations, some
of the images have been taken on the third train, on the afternoon of 10.
The train come with the locomotive tender-forward, and this was expected
since the official trip began at Santa Maria Novella station and from Campo
marte would have to reverse. The big surprise was seeing on the head of
the train a 740.
The train fas expected to have two 625 on head , four cars and on baggage-car.
They told me that the second 625 that had to come from Bologna, did not
fired regularly and so they got the other locomotive available there, the
740.143. This was larger one, and in parte defeated the effect of douple
heading, since it did most of the work. It however allowed to add one more
car that was immediately sold for all the trips.
The
740 that was on the tail of the train (been on head from SMN) was hooked
on head of the train, and the train was ready to go. I went back to get
the car to chase it, and got the picture on right from the overpass.
There you can see if you watch carefully the menace of all steam train,
ready as a vulture to jump on his victim, but this time, having two steamers,
it remained quiet and idling.
A thing that i did not liked was the organization of the departure:
On both days the train of the morning was closed between other trains on
adjacent tracks. On 9 also they was not sure until the last moment if they
could put the train on one of the passenger tracks. I can see that
tracks are necessary, but since most of that train was empty ones, could
not for one day take in another place, for one hour ? This is the reason
for which there are very few pictures of the full train in Firenze. Even
the staff had to use underpass to reach the train. A nice touch was instead
that the staff of the train had a series of different uniforma, from the
30s until the one of 1997.Here One of the conductors with the 1930 uniform
and an engineer with the one of 40s
The train left .... first stop is a non stop ... The fist station encountered
is Bivio S. Marco Vecchio, where will meet the
line from Firenze S.M.N. . It is not yet activated, so the train passed.
I howewer get a picture and a full stereo-sound
MOVIE. (sound only also)
Soon after the traim made its first scheduled stop, at the new stop
of Salviati.
This was a short one, but enought to allow me and all the other chaser
to wait at the Calderaio, that is one of the more
interesting place to watch the train.
Here there is a good place to get pictures on a train, in the place
that is the steepiest of all the line, so the steamers have to give out
the soul.
Of course for this place I have also the movie
with full sound
The train stopped briefly at Pian del Mugnone, and I go on to Caldine.
Page ©1999 by Leonardo Boselli - leo@dicea.unifi.it