Italy by train

Station to station, town to town, ERICA FIRPO experiences poetry in motion on board vintage locomotive, the Treno Natura.

- ERICA FIRPO

There is something about a train ride. The romance of departure, the mystery of the passengers, the architecture of the ☐ stations and the hypnotic motion make me book a ticket to go somewhere, anywhere, at least once a month. Maybe it's that I've watched too many movies like Harry Potter, Some Like It Hot, Before Sunrise and even Murder on the Orient Express, but I love rail travel - high speed, regional, vintage. All aboard, and I'm on it.

That's why I find myself standing at Track One at Stazione di Siena, Siena's train station on a cold, rainy November evening, watching steam waft from a vintage engine.

Vintage trains have been travelling Italy's retired railways and underused, secondary tracks for years. It wasn't until recently that Fondazione FS, Italy's national railway company, launched Treni Storici, a rail program combining vintage steam, diesel and electric locomotives and historic carriages, with curated itineraries like Binari Senza Tempo and Treno dei Sapori in almost every region of Italy.

The Treno Natura (Nature Train) is a restored steam engine tacked to a 1928 Centoporte, a 100-door carriage accommodating 300 passengers. Like every vintage train, it attracts attention, and the next morning at Stazione di Siena is a scene from a movie. Conductors and engineers hang off the engine waving to small children. Stylish passengers crowd together as spectators snap photos, and a local band breaks into the Italian national anthem. I'm later told by capotreno (conductor) Simone Luschi this always happens.