by Tim Parks
The problem was to get people on board the trains and hopefully paying for their tickets. Foreign tourists and businessmen would always use the main lines, and commuters were more or less condemned to using the suburban lines. But what about the provinces? Mussolini, who liked to be personally involved in everything to do with the railways, tried to kill two birds with one stone, inventing the so-called treni popolari, made up entirely of third-class carriages, which would take working people to seaside or skiing destinations on public holidays at a fraction of the regular price. People were to be endeared to the regime and encouraged to live healthier lives, getting out into the country on weekends. In 1934 the treni popolari shifted more than a million passengers and gave many Italians their first experience of train travel.
On 14 June 1940, just four days after Il Duce declared war on France, an armed Italian train running along the Costa Azzura began shelling French naval vessels. Throughout the war the trains moved troops, refugees, armaments and prisoners in huge numbers. Eventually the railways were bombed by the Allies and blown up by the retreating Germans. After the Italian surrender in 1943, the Germans, who were occupying the centre and north of the country, made Verona their main transport hub, lying as the city does on the intersection between the east–west (Milan–Venice) and north–south (Rome– Berlin) routes. So it was from Verona, from those same platforms where I catch my train of the living dead, that Jews and other undesirables were shipped north in stifling or freezing freight wagons over the Brenner Pass and onward to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Birkenau. One such wagon is still preserved in Verona Porta Nuova and displayed every year on the Day of the Shoah in Piazza Bra, the city’s central square. Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi wrote: ‘No diary or story written by those of us who came back is complete without its train, the sealed wagons, transformed from freight trucks to mobile prisons or even instruments of death.’
2,104 railwaymen died in the Second World War, 407 of them in partisan actions. To their great credit, some workers did attempt to sabotage the German war effort by damaging switching systems and locomotives. At the end of the war, in one way or another, 4,500 miles of line had been destroyed, together with 4,750 rail bridges. Paradoxically, even though the full extent of the pre-war network was never entirely restored, by 1950 the number of passengers had doubled in comparison with the late 1930s, though the amount of freight being carried was falling off fast. The roads were winning that contest. Through the 1950s there was a frenzy of road building. No one was thinking of global warming. No one was worried that petrol might be a limited resource. Traffic congestion was not a concern. Nor were the thousands of road deaths. All that mattered was individual freedom and the dream of door-to-door service. In April 1961 the automobile magazine Quattroruote (Four Wheels) promoted a race from Milan to Rome between the new, fast electric train, the Settebello, and an Alfa Romeo Giulietta. The train made it in six hours, thirty-seven minutes. The Alfa did it in five hours, fifty-nine minutes. Game over. As the autostrada construction programme moved into full swing, the Ferrovie dello Stato began to haemorrhage passengers.
It was at this point, no doubt, that you started to see the distinction between two kinds of rail travel that is becoming more and more evident today. Most train transport would be a service for the carless poor, for commuters with no choice, for backpackers and drifters, the living dead, or for eccentrics like me who loathe driving any distance at all. Cheap, slow, poorly serviced night trains, the so-called treni di speranza (trains of hope) would take workers, students and later immigrants the six hundred miles from south to north at dirt-cheap prices. Filthy commuter trains would bring low-paid workers into Milan, Rome and Genoa on annual season tickets that wouldn’t pay for a month’s travel in countries north of the Alps. Ancient rolling stock wasn’t even dusted off to carry football fans to away games. Here, alongside the acknowledgement that the railways had an important social and economic function, there would be no serious investment and only the absolutely essential maintenance. This was, and is, a soup-kitchen approach to rail transport. Any self-respecting person with the price of a car, or an air ticket, would drive or fly. How many times in casual conversation have people shown surprise that I don’t drive to Milan?
But then for the business folks, the respectable tourists and the phobics who can’t fly there would be the luxury trains; first the Settebello, then the Rapido and Super Rapido, then the Eurostar, trains that required you to pay double or triple for speed and hygiene. Even here, though, it was hard to compete with a road network that was soaking up 80 per cent of public investment in infrastructure. The terrorist bombs that killed twelve people on a night train between Florence and Bologna in 1974 and again eighty-five people in the waiting room at Bologna station in 1980 did not help. I was in Verona the day of the Bologna bomb, on a holiday with my wife to visit her brother and to check out the possibility of moving there. Though I wasn’t aware of it then, when I settled in Italy in 1981, the Ferrovie dello Stato were moving into what might have proved a terminal decline; government investment was low, yet at the same time politicians were once again forcing the railways to take on more workers than they could possibly need or use. Even the nostalgia that began to attach itself to trains was a bad sign. Nothing is more obsolete than yesterday’s vision of the future.
In 1985 train ticket prices, after accounting for inflation, were a third of what they had been at the beginning of the century, while the cost of labour had multiplied by six. Train travel was more or less being given away to keep people sweet. At this point, in a flourish of semi-seriousness, the rail company was transformed into an independent authority with an obligation to break even. Much was said about freeing the organisation from political control and applying market constraints. But the truth was that it was still owned and regulated by the state, so the obligation to break even was meaningless; it was always going to be bailed out, whatever its losses, and thus was always able to secure loans and build up debt, a debt that was really part of the national debt, though it no longer officially appeared as such.
In 1992 the FS, as it is usually called, was transformed again, into a private company, but with the state retaining a majority shareholding. This meant that it now had the freedom to hire and fire and invest, with state money but without any state-appointed authority to control it. Needless to say, the politicians pushed the railway men to do what was politically convenient for each and all of them in their own constituencies, and very soon there were accusations of corruption and legal investigations. In the meantime, to reduce overmanning, the government offered early pensions to all railway men over forty – an uncle of my wife’s was a beneficiary – reducing the workforce from 216,000 to 120,000 at ruinous cost to the taxpayer and without helping the railways very much since many of those who went were the more capable workers, men confident they could get work elsewhere to supplement their pension, while those who remained and found themselves working harder immediately went on strike for higher salaries; by the end of the nineties the company was paying the same wage bill for half the workers.
In the mid-1990s the European Community began to press all member states to open up public transport to private competition. So, as I wrote earlier, in 1999 Ferrovie dello Stato became a group comprising Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI), which would run the lines and smaller stations, and Trenitalia, which would run the trains. Theoretically, the aim was to allow other entrepreneurs to compete with Trenitalia for use of the lines; but since top executives from the RFI and Trenitalia continued to sit on each other’s boards, this seemed unlikely; for the most part people thought of the development as an ugly tangle of bureaucracy and cosmetics. It was at this point that we began to hear that mocking farewell when each train reached its terminus: ‘Thank you for choosing Trenitalia.’
WHAT WAS THE CHOICE at Verona Porta Vescovo if I was going to use this station to get to Milan? Exactly four slow but direct trains a day – Interregionali – and a fair number of Regionali th
at ran as far as Verona Porta Nuova and contrived never to connect with onward trains to Milan.
Four penitential trains it was, then: the 6.50 a.m., the 12.36 p.m., the 16.36, and the 18.37.
There is no ticket office in Porta Vescovo, but in the waiting room you have to pass through from road to platform there is one ancient grey machine issuing regional tickets only, that is, for destinations within a range of something less than a hundred miles. There’s no touch-sensitive screen here, just a few sticky old buttons. Everything is coded in numbers. In particular, each station, and there are hundreds of them, is represented by three digits that you have to check on an interminable list to the side of the machine and then punch in with the buttons. Not to worry, though: five days out of seven this machine is not working. In which case you can buy your ticket in the station cafe.
Porta Vescovo has the most charming railway cafe I know: old wooden chairs and tables with red-and-white-checked tablecloths, windows with lace curtains looking out onto the platform; two bustling, shrill-voiced women who know their customers of old, for no stranger would ever come to catch a train from Porta Vescovo; then their two shapely daughters (I presume), both with attractively and very differently lopsided smiles, plus an ancient, plaintive old man whom the women trust only to move boxes and perhaps take the money, but certainly not to make a cappuccino or operate the ticket machine they have behind the bar. Get in here at 6 a.m. and the girls will have a coffee in front of you in thirty seconds, together with an obscenely calorific croissant full of sticky custard. Return around seven in the evening and the two signore will pour out a chilled Custoza and slap a bowl of crisps in front of you for just a couple of euros. Most of the conversation is strictly in local dialect, with guys working in the nearby bus depot dropping in for robust salami sandwiches and glasses of red wine at any time of day.
But on Sunday the cafe is closed. And on Sunday the ticket machine never works. Sunday afternoon is when I now travel to Milan, to be there on time for a lesson Monday morning. Since I now make only one journey a week, sleeping over in the city for a couple of days, I no longer buy a season ticket. So the malfunctioning machine is a problem.
Loud announcements ring out along the deserted platforms of Porta Vescovo. My favourite is the one that tells people, two or three people, to spread out along the whole platform to speed up boarding. Another very peremptory voice tells us we must ‘provide ourselves’ (munirsi) with a ticket before we get on the train; it is a criminal offence, we are reminded, to board a train without providing ourselves with a ticket.
I look around. Who is playing these announcements? Is there anyone in the station, or are they triggered remotely? If there is anyone, they are presumably hiding in the tiny office to the left of the waiting room on platform one, its glass door protected by venetian blinds. Dirigenti, says an ancient sign above the door to the left. Directors. When I knock there is no response. Are the directors aware, if there are any directors these days, that the ticket machine isn’t working? I don’t feel I can simply push the handle and walk in to force someone to pay attention to me because a notice says, ‘VIETATO L’ACCESSO alle persone non autorizzate’ (NO ENTRY to unauthorised persons). It then goes on to warn that ‘Transgressors are subject to sanctions ranging from a sum of €258 to €1,549’.
There is a big difference between €258 (£220) and €1,549 (about £1,200). It gives a judge considerable discretion between oddly precise sums. Could they have been converted from the old lire? There’s no explanation of the size of the fine, but as always in Italy we are informed as to the legislation that authorised it: ‘art. 19.3 of DPR 753/80, artt.le 2 of L. 561/93, 689/81 and s.m.i’.
A DPR is a decree of the president of the republic. An L. is just a law, that is, when a decree is voted through parliament and converted into law. And s.m.i.? I must have asked a dozen passengers over several months before one older man told me with a perfectly straight face, ‘successive modifiche ed integrazioni’ (later amendments and integrations).
Integrations!
The fact is that despite all this superfluous information there is no one to tell you what you’re supposed to do when you can’t buy a ticket. I can’t remember this ever happening to me before. I suppose I must head straight to the capotreno and confess. However, if you are to enjoy the luxury of a seat on the always crowded Sunday-evening train to Milan, you must grab one when people get off and on at Verona. And that is only three minutes from Porta Vescovo. If you’re still looking for the capotreno after Porta Nuova, you’ll be standing for two hours. If you sit before finding him, he’ll find you and fine you because you haven’t bothered to find him.
Officially, a capotreno hangs out at the front of the train; that’s where he keeps his stuff, his little travel bag and official papers and personal belongings, so I position myself way up the platform. The train is long. As it grinds to a halt, I wait a moment and look along the carriages to see where he will pop out with his peaked cap and the green flag he waves to tell the driver, who presumably watches in a mirror, that he can close the doors and leave. But of course as soon as people start getting off, it’s hard to see where the man has appeared. Certainly not at the front of the train. A number of people have jumped off, lighting cigarettes as they do so to get a few desperately needed puffs before the train departs. Then, just as I’m about to get on, a bunch of Japanese girls start climbing down with their huge suitcases. At once I know these kids are getting off at the wrong place – only locals get off at Porta Vescovo. These girls have seen the big signs along the platform: VERONA PORTA VESCOVO. They know their train is due in Verona at 6.43 p.m. They assume it has arrived three minutes early. Or perhaps it’s already 6.50, in which case they rejoice that their train is only seven minutes late. Understandably they start to pile off.
‘This is not Verona,’ I tell them in English.
They look at me and smile vaguely. Behind me is the huge sign: VERONA PORTA VESCOVO.
Every time I board a train here this scene repeats itself, with English, German, American or Scandinavian passengers.
‘This is not Verona. Get back on the train. It’s the next stop, Verona Porta Nuova, three minutes.’
Some refuse to pay attention. You are one of the thousands of wheeler-dealers taking advantage of tourists in some way. The ladies in the bar tell me that the only strangers they ever see in Porta Vescovo are people who have got off the train by accident and come to ask how to proceed to Verona proper. Why, I wonder, doesn’t Trenitalia do something to make it clear that this is not the main station? After all, they tell us which laws authorise fines we’re never going to risk paying. The station could just be called Porta Vescovo rather than Verona Porta Vescovo.
‘This is not Verona station.’
Does the Japanese girl I’m talking to understand English?
She blinks from weak eyes, looks up and down the narrow platform and across at a wasteland of sidings and rusting freight trucks and decides I’m probably right. So now the bags have to be loaded again. I start to help. The capotreno is getting impatient and blows his whistle. Where is he? The shrill sound is coming from far away – the other end of the train, no less. I’m done. I’ll be standing all the way.
THIS SITUATION COULDN’T GO on. Since tickets for regional trains are valid for two months, the only sensible answer seemed to be to buy a bunch of tickets at once, whenever I was near a ticket window in any station, so as never to be without. It was January when I came to this conclusion. Carnival was round the corner. At carnival time the trains returning from Venice are packed with masked ladies and tiny penguins and D’Artagnans. The worst season to travel. I decided not to be miserly for once and bought first-class tickets to be sure of a seat.
The truth is I have always thought of myself as a second-class passenger. No doubt this is something that comes from early infancy when my carless parents rarely had the price of a train at all, let alone a first-class ticket. Later, when I had the cash to travel how I liked, I d
ecided that people were more interesting for a novelist in second class. What basis I had for thinking this, I do not know. Perhaps it was a question of the kind of novels I was writing. In any case the second-class ticket to Milan was €9, the first €15. I lashed out and bought six tickets, imagining I was treating myself.
You cross the rails to platform four. There are about ten people spread along a platform of a couple of hundred yards. The first-class carriages are towards but not actually at the front. Other passengers on the platform can see you’re standing in the first-class area. You’re the only one. It’s simultaneously embarrassing and gratifying. The bell begins to ring out with its urgent, insistent tone. The train hoves into view from the Venice direction. The big, filthy blue locomotive squeals and labours along the rails. The old rolling stock is smothered with graffiti. The windows show that the carriages are packed. People are standing, many of them masked in the silliest outfits. How smart of you, you think, to have bought a first-class ticket!
As the train finally grinds to a halt, you move to the nearest door, pleased to be an insider who knows exactly where his carriage will be. The door opens and a group of Australians begins to climb down. ‘Wrong station, mate, you want the next,’ you tell a strapping boy in a cavalier cloak. ‘This is just a provincial watering hole.’ They laugh and climb back up. So now you’ve done a good deed on top of all your other smart decisions. You hurry after them, your stamped first-class ticket all legal and correct in your pocket and …