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Railways in Sardinia
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Railways in Sardinia
The railway network of Sardinia includes lines that develop for a total of about 1,038 km in length, of which 430 km with an ordinary gauge and about 608 km narrow gauge (950 mm), with an average density of 43 m of rail per km2, a figure that drops to 25 m/km2 considering only public transport lines.
Railway operations on the island are managed by two companies. The first, the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane group, manages the 4 ordinary gauge railway lines that make up the main network of the island through the subsidiaries RFI and Trenitalia. The remaining 4 sections active in public transport, all narrow gauge, constitute the secondary network, extended by 169 km and entirely managed by ARST Sp A., a transport company wholly owned by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia. This company also controls 438 km of tourist lines, always narrow gauge, active especially in summer and at the request of groups of tourists.
The Sardinian railway network is present in all provinces, even if there are areas without railways. There are also several railways (all narrow gauge) which over the decades have been closed and dismantled.
Sardinia, immediately after the Unification of Italy, found itself to be the only territory in the Kingdom without a railway network for public transport: the only lines present were in fact private railways for industrial use. The first railway to enter into operation on the island was the one between the mine of San Leone and the pier of La Maddalena near Capoterra, a line open to traffic in 1862 . The lack of a public railway network led island politicians several times to request government intervention to grant this service also to Sardinia.
After various doubts and objections from national politicians, in 1862 an Italian-English consortium, headed by cavalier Gaetano Semenza, obtained the concession for the construction of the network that would link Cagliari to Iglesias, Porto Torres and Terranova Pausania (in Olbia). The consortium formed the Royal Company of the Sardinian Railways in London, which between studies of the routes, problems of conventions with the State and of various kinds, opened the first stretch of railway (Cagliari- Villasor) in April 1871. The construction of the planned lines, based on a project by the Welsh engineer Benjamin Piercy, ended in 1881, but in the meantime, for the traffic of passengers to the continent, it was decided to use the new maritime docking of Golfo Aranci instead of that of Terranova. The fact made it necessary to build an extension of the railway, which joined the two Gallura ports in 1883.
Sardinia finally had its own railways and, as of December 31, 1899, 30 steam locomotives, 106 carriages, 23 baggage and 436 wagons for freight service were operating on the Royal Railways.
However, the layout of the Royal Railways network excluded various areas of the island from the possibility of using trains. In fact, many centers complained that they had been cut off from this very important progress in island transport because of the distance from the railway tracks. It was thus decided in 1885, with Law 3011 of March 22 of that year, to grant the possibility of building a secondary network that connected the more isolated centers with the main cities and with the network of the Royal Railways. Given the specific request for an economy construction, it was decided to use a 950 mm track gauge, which would also have helped the engineers in planning the routes in the inaccessible internal areas of Sardinia/
The following year the works were entrusted to the " Italian Society for the Secondary Railways of Sardinia " (SFSS), which, building at a fast pace, inaugurated its first lines after only 17 months. In fact, already on February 15, 1888, the SFSS opened the Cagliari-Isili and the line from Tempio Pausania to the SFSS station in Monti, which borders the homonymous port of the Royal Railways . By the end of the decade they were also inaugurated the dorsal Bosa - Macomer - Nuoro and Sassari-Alghero, while from Isili the railway was extended to arise .
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Railways in Sardinia
The railway network of Sardinia includes lines that develop for a total of about 1,038 km in length, of which 430 km with an ordinary gauge and about 608 km narrow gauge (950 mm), with an average density of 43 m of rail per km2, a figure that drops to 25 m/km2 considering only public transport lines.
Railway operations on the island are managed by two companies. The first, the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane group, manages the 4 ordinary gauge railway lines that make up the main network of the island through the subsidiaries RFI and Trenitalia. The remaining 4 sections active in public transport, all narrow gauge, constitute the secondary network, extended by 169 km and entirely managed by ARST Sp A., a transport company wholly owned by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia. This company also controls 438 km of tourist lines, always narrow gauge, active especially in summer and at the request of groups of tourists.
The Sardinian railway network is present in all provinces, even if there are areas without railways. There are also several railways (all narrow gauge) which over the decades have been closed and dismantled.
Sardinia, immediately after the Unification of Italy, found itself to be the only territory in the Kingdom without a railway network for public transport: the only lines present were in fact private railways for industrial use. The first railway to enter into operation on the island was the one between the mine of San Leone and the pier of La Maddalena near Capoterra, a line open to traffic in 1862 . The lack of a public railway network led island politicians several times to request government intervention to grant this service also to Sardinia.
After various doubts and objections from national politicians, in 1862 an Italian-English consortium, headed by cavalier Gaetano Semenza, obtained the concession for the construction of the network that would link Cagliari to Iglesias, Porto Torres and Terranova Pausania (in Olbia). The consortium formed the Royal Company of the Sardinian Railways in London, which between studies of the routes, problems of conventions with the State and of various kinds, opened the first stretch of railway (Cagliari- Villasor) in April 1871. The construction of the planned lines, based on a project by the Welsh engineer Benjamin Piercy, ended in 1881, but in the meantime, for the traffic of passengers to the continent, it was decided to use the new maritime docking of Golfo Aranci instead of that of Terranova. The fact made it necessary to build an extension of the railway, which joined the two Gallura ports in 1883.
Sardinia finally had its own railways and, as of December 31, 1899, 30 steam locomotives, 106 carriages, 23 baggage and 436 wagons for freight service were operating on the Royal Railways.
However, the layout of the Royal Railways network excluded various areas of the island from the possibility of using trains. In fact, many centers complained that they had been cut off from this very important progress in island transport because of the distance from the railway tracks. It was thus decided in 1885, with Law 3011 of March 22 of that year, to grant the possibility of building a secondary network that connected the more isolated centers with the main cities and with the network of the Royal Railways. Given the specific request for an economy construction, it was decided to use a 950 mm track gauge, which would also have helped the engineers in planning the routes in the inaccessible internal areas of Sardinia/
The following year the works were entrusted to the " Italian Society for the Secondary Railways of Sardinia " (SFSS), which, building at a fast pace, inaugurated its first lines after only 17 months. In fact, already on February 15, 1888, the SFSS opened the Cagliari-Isili and the line from Tempio Pausania to the SFSS station in Monti, which borders the homonymous port of the Royal Railways . By the end of the decade they were also inaugurated the dorsal Bosa - Macomer - Nuoro and Sassari-Alghero, while from Isili the railway was extended to arise .
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