Trains in Italy - To Cinque Terre

This is part of a series documenting the trains I saw in Italy in late spring 2017.

We left Rome on May 31 and headed to Cinque Terre. This set of five fishing towns is becoming a popular tourist destination. To get there by train, one has to first go to La Spezia, then transfer to a local train that runs through all five towns.

Onboard the Train

Here's the interior of the train we took to La Spezia.

The train had a snack bar on board, but it was closed when I walked by.

Here's a view of a "2nd class" car.

2nd class car on Trenitalia

It was pretty comfortable, if basic.

The View

Some kind of concrete tie train at the Follonica station

I amused myself by taking lots of photos out the windows. Since the train wasn't crowded, both my wife and I had window seats. Of course, I was a lot more interested in photographing the trackside equipment and structures than she was!

I'm fascinated by European diesel locomotives. The "form factor" of these locomotives is so different than current North American locomotives. In many ways, they are more reminiscent of early North American diesels.

The diesel below is a centre cab - not done now but GE certainly had centre cabs in their early diesels.

A diesel switcher in Italy

The locomotive below (one of two on the concrete tie train seen above) vaguely reminds me of an early Fairbanks-Morse unit - squarish, with a small cab.

One of two paired diesel units at Follonica, Italy

A little research shows that it is an ex Czech diesel - I spotted one like it a few years ago.

I think the key difference is that European diesels are just small, because European trains are shorter and lighter than North American trains. Also, most European trains are pulled by electric locomotives, so the diesels are used more for branch lines and maintenance trains.

I don't know what this is, but man, it's a cute little locomotive!

I'm not sure what industry this was, but those are certainly cooling towers.

Cooling towers and containers

We had glimpses of a lot of Italian train stations. Some were pretty modern but some had some nice touches, like the Rosignano station below with the patterned arch above the doors.

Rosignano station

Some stations are little more than platforms - at least from the view I had. Presumably there is a nice station building... on the other side of the train.

S. Marinella train station

Naturally, wires are everywhere since most trains are electric.

Livorno Centrale

We had power at our seats, which was great for keeping cell phones charged. I had a very bulky international adapter plugged in, to adapt the standard North American plugs for Italian/European plugs. It doesn't convert voltage but most DC adapters can handle 120V through 240V. Read the label!

World's bulkiest power plug adapter

The train stopped at Pisa on the way. Before the trip, my wife and I had discussed whether we should go see the famed Leaning Tower, but we decided against it. We figured that it wouldn't be a good use of our limited time to go see the tower, take a photo, then leave. I did snap a photo from the train as we crossed a river in Pisa itself, hoping to catch the tower in the photo. I didn't get it in the photo below, but I think we did catch a glimpse of the tower as we left the town.

Crossing the Arno River in Pisa, Italy

La Spezia

La Spezia Centrale

We arrived at La Spezia, and left our train. Looking at the handy displays, we found the platform for the train to Riomaggiore (technically, you look for the train to Levanto) and went there to wait. Of course, I spent my time photographing trains while we waited.

Train at La Spezia - with a Bombardier E.464 class locomotive

Another train at La Spezia

I was pretty fascinated by this little diesel switcher in La Spezia. Clearly it has sat there for a while to get such a graffiti treatment.

Graffiti infested diesel locomotive

The Train to Cinque Terre

The train to Cinque Terre

Our train showed up, pretty much on time, and we boarded. The interior of the train was pretty spartan, but that's OK. It's a short haul train - it's only an hour run between La Spezia and Levanto. Since we were getting off at the first of the five towns - Riomaggiore - we would barely sit down before we arrived.

Basic coach

There's not much to share from a 7 minute ride. I remember that we went through a couple of short tunnels. The line through Cinque Terre hugs the coast and definitely goes through a lot of tunnels. The track in Riomaggiore is only exposed for a few hundred feet and goes into tunnels on both ends of the station.

Riomaggiore

Riomaggiore, Italy

Again, this isn't a travel blog, so I won't write much about the non-train stuff. The town of Riomaggiore is simply gorgeous and well worth a visit. It's small and quaint, but touristy.

We enjoyed a lovely sunset down by the water.

iPhone photo of the sunset at Riomaggiore

We woke up the next day - June 1 - and, after having breakfast, got on a train back to La Spezia to connect to Florence, our next destination.

More to come!

Trains in Italy - To Rome!

Back in late May 2017, my wife and I went to Italy for a lovely spring vacation. It was our first time in Italy and we enjoyed it immensely. We definitely want to go back. Since this is a train blog, I'm not going to talk about all of the vacation aspects, but instead cover the train-related parts of our trip... and there were a lot!

Getting to Rome

We flew in three phases - Winnipeg to Toronto (YWG-YYZ), Toronto to Frankfurt (YYZ-FRA), and Frankfurt to Rome (FRA-FCO). It's always a little sobering to think that you are flying 10 km above the ocean, hundreds if not thousands of kilometres from any land, at a large fraction of the speed of sound. I often take air travel for granted, but it's pretty amazing when you think of it.

In Frankfurt I saw these little automated airport trains zooming around.

Airport trams in Frankfurt

We arrived in Rome - but my wife's suitcase did not. We had to spend some time in the airport at the lost luggage counter, filling out forms and so forth to arrange to get her bag. It wasn't totally lost, just lagging a little behind us. It would end up being delivered to our hotel that evening.

To get from the airport (the Leonardo da Vinci!) to downtown Rome, we took the airport train, the Leonardo Express. The station is in the airport itself, which is common in Europe and very convenient.

Train station in Leonardo da Vinci airport

I really enjoyed some of the signs on the yellow posts.

Pericolo di Morte

"Non Touche - Pericolo di Morte" translates as "Do Not Touch - Danger of Death".

After a little wait in the airport, our train arrived.

Leonardo Express train

This is an ETR-25 "Jazz" electric multiple unit (EMU) train, built by Alstom. It is very comfortable and whisked us downtown. It's all coach seating, of course, with no service on board, but it doesn't take too long so there's no need for drinks or anything like that.

Inside the Leonardo Express

I managed to grab the window seat (sorry, honey) and took a lot of photos of the trackside structures, maintenance equipment, and whatever else I could see. It's always interesting to see the railways of other countries and see how they differ from North American railways.

Maintenance equipment at Ponte Galeria, Italy

One thing I noticed quickly is that there is a lot of graffiti on the maintenance equipment. Also, the graffiti increased as we approached Rome. As you may know, I hate graffiti and it saddened me to see it here. I shouldn't have been surprised, since the word derives from the Italian "graffiato", meaning "scratched".

We passed a few small diesel locomotives.

Diesel locomotive in Italy, with graffiti (sigh)

Like Belgium, Italian trains are mostly electric, but there are some lines that are not electrified, and of course if you are doing maintenance on the wires, you need another way to move your equipment.

There are several train stations on the line between the airport and Rome, including Roma Trastevere, seen below. We didn't stop at any of them.

Roma Trastevere station

After about 40 minutes, we arrived at the Roma Termini station, the main train station in Rome.

Trains at Roma Termini

My long suffering wife was OK with me spending a few minutes photographing the trains in the station before we set off to find our hotel.

(Above) Locomotive E464-226 is a Bombardier E.464 class, the most common locomotive in service in Italy. 728 were built. It's capable of 4700 horsepower and a maximum speed of 160 km/hr. On that train, it was coupled to a regional train of passenger coaches. I've tried to find some information on those coaches but I can't find anything. My Google-fu has failed. :(

(Below) This is a "Vivalto" train set, manufactured by Hitachi. This is a six car consist, with one motor car and five trailers, with a total of 725 seats and a total capacity of 1,300 people including standing passengers.

Trenitalia "Vivalto" trainset in Rome

 Check out that sweet streamlined train in the background below!

Trains in Roma Termini

We left the station, and after a bit of wandering around, found our hotel.

We stayed in Rome from the 28th to the 31st of May, hitting the highlights, like the Colosseum, the Forum, the Vatican, and so forth. Rome is a marvelous city. I remember that it was very hot and I was glad that Rome has many free water fountains scattered around the city that you can refill your water bottle from. We drank a lot of water!

I did take a few photos of the outside of Roma Termini, but to be honest, it's pretty boring, in my opinion. The station was built in the 1950s and definitely has a modern look to it.

Roma Termini - exterior

I took a photo of the arrivals and departures board in the station during our stay in Rome. There are quite a few trains through here!

Trenitalia arrivals/departures board

I'll have a separate post about the trams we saw in Rome.

I won't bore you with a bunch of vacation photos, but here are two that I like.

Panorama of the Colosseum (L) and Arch of Constantine (R)

How could you not like the Colosseum? I liked it so much that I went back at dawn the next day to photograph it again.

My wife and I in the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican

That Gallery of Maps was definitely our favourite part of the Vatican - even more than the Sistine Chapel. Oddly enough, when we were in the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel was closed for a few hours. It turns out that our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was visiting the Vatican at the same time that we were, and they cleared the chapel out so he could be alone in there.

Let me tell you, it was pretty crowded when we went in! I have no photos, because photography is not allowed in the chapel, even though a lot of people were sneaking photos. sigh

Coming Up

After Rome, we boarded a train to take us to the Cinque Terre area of Italy, which is a set of five ("cinque") small fishing towns. This is a beautiful area of Italy, and although we only spent one night there, we fell in love with it. It was also a great place to do some railfanning!

READ MORE

See Also

• Not Just Waffles and Chocolate - Trains in Belgium
• Trains in Paris
• Trains in Amsterdam
• Public Transit in Vienna
• On to the Czech Republic

Effing Graffiti

I want to rant a bit about graffiti. I saw two posts this weekend of vandalism that just made me mad: VIA Rail's Canadian and the Toys for Tots train.

VIA's Canadian

It's common to see freight cars with graffiti on them. I should say it's uncommon to see cars without graffiti. However, it's a lot rarer to see passenger cars get vandalized.

Jeff Keddy posted this photo of VIA Rail's Chateau Lasalle with graffiti on one side. (thanks to Jeff for permission to post)

Chateau Lasalle with graffiti. Photo by Jeff Keddy.

Apparently the car was parked at Union Station (in Winnipeg, I believe) and someone hopped the fence and sprayed it, then did some damage to the interior as well.

That made me mad. But this one made me furious:

Toys For Tots Train

Railway Express car with graffiti. Photo by Taras Terlecky.

This train is owned by the United Railroad Historical Society of NJ and was used for a "Toys for Tots" drive.

Toys for Tots train, vandalized. Photo by Taras Terlecky

It was vandalized this weekend and several cars were "decorated" by some jackass or jackasses. A police report has been filed.

I don't know if you can see from the photo at right but one of the coaches also has some graffiti "scrawls" on it.

Imagine how many scarce volunteer hours have gone into maintaining and repainting this equipment... and now it will have to be done again.

Thanks to Taras Terlecky for permission to post the photos.

What the Heck?

It's bad enough to vandalize freight cars with paint. You shouldn't do this.

But to "tag" passenger cars? And museum cars?

Well, this is a family blog so I won't use the language I really want to use, but what kind of #*$&@#$ jerk does that?

I see a lot of posts about "benching" on Instagram (#benching), which is about watching and photographing graffiti on trains. Here's a big blog post on it. I'm sure it's interesting to watch for known "tags" and some of the graffiti is quite artistic.. for example:

There is definitely some real talent out there.

Most graffiti is just scribbles, vandalism with no art at all.

Regardless of its artistic value, it's wrong. It's not OK to deface someone else's property. I don't understand it at all.

I've written in the past about how I'm conflicted about graffiti on trains - the art of it versus the vandalism. No more.

Just.. Stop

Just stop doing graffiti. And stop glorifying it.

For my part, I'm not going to post any more graffiti. I mean, it'll be on trains that I photograph - hard to avoid that - but I won't post any photos where the photo prominently features graffiti.

I'm going to unfollow anyone on Instagram who primarily posts graffiti. I might lose some followers, but I don't want them.

I'm sick to my stomach from seeing these passenger cars vandalized, and I'm sick of graffiti.

Enough.

A Fine Evening's Railfanning

Graffiti is everywhere

The sun came out Saturday afternoon, so I decided to do a little railfanning in the late afternoon / early evening. This winter has been severely lacking in sunshine, so I wanted to take advantage of the sun when it showed up.

I headed out and decided to take the Perimeter Highway around to the Trans-Canada and then look into Symington. As I approached the CP Emerson sub's crossing over the Perimeter, the lights came on. If I were like most other Winnipeg drivers, I would have gunned it through the crossing. However, I'd rather not get hit by a train (#safetyfirst) so I stopped and the gates came down.

Like any good railfan, I had my camera sitting on the passenger seat, ready for action. I lowered the passenger side window and shot the approaching northbound train.

Grab shot!

The power was unremarkable but it was nice to catch it at just the right time.

The train had a mixed bag of cars, including an empty intermodal well car and a few auto racks. I liked this graffiti:

Well done graffiti

I really don't like vandalism like this, but wow - great art.

After the train passed, I drove up to the Trans-Canada and exited. There was nothing in sight to the south on the CN Sprague sub, so I went north toward Symington. I saw a CN train was pulling up to Navin, although they had a red light so they couldn't proceed yet. As I watched, a CN truck pulled up to the signals, presumably to inspect the train when it got its chance to leave.

No turns ahead on the CN Sprague subdivision!

I waited for five or ten minutes but they weren't leaving, so I left instead. As I approached Symington I saw they were on their way. There was a DPU locomotive in the middle of the train but I didn't catch the number.

Not much was going on at the hump. I drove up to CN's Transcona yard but there was no train there, just cars, so I kept going up to the CP line and on to CEMR.

CEMR 4002 was idling away at the head of some tank cars. CEMR 4000 and 4001 were moving around in front of the shop, but the interesting stuff was behind the shop.

Two CEFX locomotives were there - CEFX 6056 and CEFX 6057. Both are SD38-2 locomotives, apparently renumbered and relettered back in June 2015. These are ex Iowa Interstate locomotives, now with a Cando logo on them.

Cando or CEFX? Who knows?

Also on the property are two Railink locos, CCGX 1808 and CCGX 1755. A little Googling showed that these locomotives were working on the Barrie-Collingwood Railway before that more or less went dormant. Apparently they sat in Utopia, ON for a few years before being picked up by CP this past May. I don't know how long they've been in Winnipeg, as I haven't been by CEMR for quite a while.

CCGX 1808 in Winnipeg

After photographing what I could see from public property, I carried on south to the CN Redditt subdivision and headed out toward Dugald. The road was... icy... so I was being careful. I arrived in Dugald and took yet another photograph of the grain elevator.

Photograph #728 of the Dugald grain elevator

One thing I did spy with my little eye was a green signal wayyyy in the distance.

Some serious cropping

That meant a train was cleared to head east out of Winnipeg.

I headed back toward Winnipeg, keeping one eye on the track to my right and at least one on the icy road. I didn't see a train until I crossed the Perimeter Highway, and then I spotted the train picking its way through the Transcona yard.

I found a safe place to turn around and got ahead of it. I decided to get a little artsy with this nicely placed shelter to frame up CN 2647 as it led the train out of Winnipeg.

Frame it up

That was the end of the day's railfanning... not a bad outing.

Thanks for reading!