Ferrovie dello Stato celebrates the birthday of Napoli-Portici in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, the ministers Luigi Di Maio and Paola De Micheli and the CEO of Fs Gianfranco Battisti.
On the occasion of one of the most important anniversaries in the country's railway history, President Mattarella traveled on board the historic presidential train the line that King Ferdinand II of Bourbon inaugurated on 3 October 1839 with the first train journey in the history of the Peninsula.
The Naples – Portici line (7,5 kilometres), the first railway track on the peninsula, linked Naples to the Granatello di Portici. The route, inaugurated 22 years before the unification of Italy, was covered in 11 minutes by two trains, each made up of 2 twin locomotives - the "Bayard" and the "Vesuvio" (designed by Bayard on the prototype of the Englishman George Stephenson ) – a tender and nine carriages capable of accommodating over 250 people.
The first railway, built in about 3 years, was part of the ambitious project planned to connect the capital of the Kingdom with Nocera and Castellamare, to then extend up to Salerno.
The city route of the railway ran along the current Corso Garibaldi - then Via dei Fossi - between Porta Nolana and Porta del Carmine, to develop on the coast road up to the area of the port of Granatello in Portici, where today stands the current Portici-Ercolano station .
The presidential train was initially made up of the 9 carriages of the royal train of the House of Savoy, returned to the State Railways between 1947 and 1948 by the FS workshops of Porta al Prato and Voghera. The carriages, damaged during the war, were restored in the XNUMXs and equipped with a communication system managed by a telephone exchange installed on the train.
Over the years, the carriages of the presidential train have become 13, but the average composition varied, depending on the occasion, between 7 and 10 units.
