I can’t blame you if you skip over the trains part of the trip report….but for this one, please give it a try.
The first leg of our journey from Parma to Verona, a branch-line ride on a small diesel powered rail car, was the most memorable train ride of our trip. It was an up close and personal look at life in rural northern Italy.
This was a branch line train, a milk-run local that stopped in tiny hamlets spread out across the rich, flat farmlands in the province of Emilia Rogmagna. The stations were mostly abandoned, or at least no longer manned. The fields were mostly wheat and corn, with combines and tractors that looked North American. The people were an earthy assortment of students, farm workers, and local folks. A good number were African immigrants, likely working on farms. This had extra poignance given the refugee ship tragedy which was unfolding in the south.
The train itself consisted of two diesel self-propelled railcars. The driver’s cab, with the massive controller for the five speed manual transmission, was at the front of the car. After each stop, the diesel motors roared under the floorboards while the driver ground the gears. The railcars didn’t spend long at top speed before going to idle and braking for the next stop. The line was single track, meaning we waited at sidings to meet and pass opposing trains.
It reminded me of trips on “RDC’s” – Rail Diesel Cars – on branch lines here in Canada, many years ago. The weedy tracks, the frequent stops, the lonely closed-up depots with only one or two travellers on the platform, the leisurely pace, the growling diesels with their frequent gear shifts, the brash interior colours and plastic seats…..all were familiar. It felt a lot like the Montreal-Lachute-Ottawa Budd Car service pre-1981, or the pre-1970 Dayliner service to Goderich, Owen Sound, Havelock, or Kincardine.
Eventually, having dropped off most of the folks who began the trip at Parma, and having picked up other customers headed northwards, we arrived in Brescia. Our leisurely pace had gradually pushed the train behind schedule, so our connection was tight. We dashed down one set of stairs, up another, and there was our Frecciabianca express train ready to depart for Verona. The riders of this train were cosmopolitan, chic, and busy with laptops and iPads. The ride was super-fast, and super-quiet, and super-punctual. It hardly felt like the Italy we had just experienced.
Paul Cordingley 