entry Aug 2006 update Mar 2014,
update July 2023
The Piedimonte d'Alife Railway, the Alifana
or: The railway’s ended but the terminal lingers on.
If you stand at Piazza Carlo
III in Naples, in front of the old Albergo dei Poveri (the
massive Bourbon “Hospice for the Poor”—the Royal Poor
House) and look across the street, you can see a building
(photo, left) with “Ferrovia Napoli - Piedimonte Matese”
engraved on the face. “Ferrovia”—it claims to be a train
station. Indeed, some older maps of the city still show
squiggly dotted lines leading away from that building—a
rail line. It is, alas, a deception. Though the doors are
sometimes open and you can get in to see historical maps
and things on the walls, the Piedimonte d'Alife Railway,
or the Alifana, is no more.The railway took its name from the last stop, the Piedimonte d'Alife station, today named Piedimonte Matese, a town about 40 miles north of Naples. The original plan was to provide service from downtown Naples up through the area known as Capodimonte (site of the airport), through Secondigliano, Marano, Giugliano, and then out of the city, north to the less densely populated areas in the foothills. It was originally in two stretches: the “lower Alifano" from Naples to Santa Maria Capua Vetere and then the “upper Alifano” for the remaining distance to Piedimonte Matese.
The Alifana was narrow-gauge and was opened in March of 1913 from Naples to Capua, a distance of 43 kilometers (c. 25 miles). The finishing touches to Piedimonte d'Alife were then completed by October 1914. The railway did its job for decades. The upper line was powered by steam locomotives and the lower section was electric.
Then, both sections were heavily damaged in WW2. The upper line was repaired and restored to service, but the lower line—the one from piazza Carlo III in downtown Naples (image, above) — never really came back, although it geared up again and did provide important commuter service into the 1970s. At that point, it could not keep up with demand and simply closed. It essentially surrendered to cars, buses and the need for more streets. Since then, many of the stations and portions of the old right-of-way have been demolished, built over, paved up, encroached upon, vandalized and rendered otherwise unusable for the original purposes. (It is a formidable exercise in so-called “urban archaeology” to try to trace the old route and find bits and pieces of stations and track. “By Jove, professor! That’s a piece of an axle from the old R.305 Henschel engine! And look! That station is now a McDonald’s parking lot!” )
In the meantime, the upper line was rebuilt by 1963, going over from steam to diesel and retooling to the standard national railway gauge in order to connect to the main Italian rail network. That made the division between the upper and lower lines final. The upper line ran and still runs, and the lower line is a memory. Hopes of ever reopening the Little-Train-that-Couldn’t are illusory. The need for rapid rail transportation back and forth between downtown and the area once served by the lower Alifana will be partially met when the new Metropolitana is completed; indeed, it is already possible to get from Secondigliano (the Piscinola station) into the city (but not yet to the main train station at Piazza Garibaldi)* by comfortable modern subway. The builders of that new Metro are now in their second or third Cheops of construction. A Cheops is the standard unit of time for building anything in Naples. One Cheops is equal to the time it took to build the Great Pyramid.
*update: as of 2014 the main station at Piazza Garibaldi is complete. See this link.
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The Rainbow Line
Sections of
the "upper line" (noted above) have been reincarnated as
the Napoli–Aversa railway (Italian: Linea
Napoli-Giugliano-Aversa) alias the Rainbow
Line (each station is painted a different color!),
also alias the Alifana bassa, or Line 11).
The Rainbow Line connects Naples with her northern
suburbs; that is, the line connects Naples (Piscinola
station) to the town of Aversa. Only the Piscinola station
(shared with line 1, image, right) is within the city
limits of Naples. Thus, if you want to use public
transport (AAAGGGHHH!) to see these Rainbow
stations (where troubles melt like lemon-drops) get on the
Metro at any station and ask anyone the way to Piscinola?
Reactions will vary, from "Dear God!" to "Sure, in Scampia
-- Fort Apache, the Badlands. That station is the last one
on the Naples Metro and, as well, the first one on the
Rainbow Line, where you board for Aversa. I see a Yellow
Brick Road and a bunch of colors. I suppose at a
certain point, somewhere on that platform, you feel a bit
light-hearted and giggly, and, well, you know...The first section of the line, between Piscinola and Mugnano, was opened in 2005. In 2009, the line was extended from Mugnano to Aversa Centro, with two intermediate stops in Giugliano and Aversa Ippodromo. Trains usually travel every 15 minutes, and every 10 minutes during peak hours. The plan is to increase the number of stations from 5 to 15 (!). Clearly, they want this thing to be a useful commuter service that people will use.
[Entries on the construction of the Metropolitana start here.]
[related entry: Abandoned Railways.]
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