Those little 424s
Italy and italian railways has never been the best place for most common wheel-scheme locos. Here locos with just two bogies (Bo' Bo') have had hard times among hundreds of italian-scheme 3 bogies locos with articulated body, which is so common mainly due to hard orography and so hard profiles of so many italian lines. If more recent E.444 was built for short and fast trains, these little sisters have represented since the start of their services, the electric bastion fronting local and branch services in the post war years. Excepting some freight services - like last empty auto racks from Torino di Sangro to Milan - and a short experiment of M.U., their trains have always been light and on short distances. They rode since 1943 on rails in every part of Italy and now they are waiting the fate in Alessandria's depot. In 15 are to reach the flame-cut, the other 105 units get the fortune of being converted to push-pull services back in 1989 and they are still at the head or tailing push-pull compos in many locations. Last 2 brown units ready for service in Alessandria's depot are now in a mixed turn with those push-pull sisters around Piemonte's lines and touch extreme points of that region, reaching Savona and even Milano P.ta Genova. Right here , 12 years ago, i shoot my first photos at these locos. In those times, in Porta Genova - terminus of the semi-unknown line from Mortara - there was still that little local station fashion lost in the railway upgrading of these final years, but moreover that place is right in the center of the city! Among push-pull trains with E.646, there were still many daily trains made by E.424. Coaches of the 50's, some type 1921 and last corbellini was the typical composition you could see shunting on the short tracks of the milanese station. Every day again there was a train headed by a M.U. of 424 that, once arrived at the end of the trip, used to shunt up and down among other 424. Every afternoon, who went to P.ta Genova, could assist to the show of the evening departures every half hour of the pendular trains leaving the city bound to small towns of the Lomellina, all of them hauled by E.424. Following those trains i began to know piemontese lines where these locos were at home. I started to go to those stations were a shot to an E.424 was sure: Mortara, Novara, Alessandria, Valenza, Voghera and Arona. When, in 1992/93, our locos arrived until the iron roof of Milano Centrale, my interest on these units again was increasing. I went looking for them even far away from Milan, in Abruzzo and Marche, in Calabria and Campania. But right then, their services were cutting down day by day and mixing with the push-pull sisters. But i was searching for that brown color (as we say: castano and isabella): that was the sign of the time! First outrage for these locos was the simplyfied color scheme of "all isabella", coming then with the extreme insult of fake depot inscriptions over some Alessandria units: Valona or Mogadiscio depots (...). Now just two units are for special or emergency services, while for 3 or 4 other locos there are planning for heritage preservation. But, over all, the important will be to keep intact the rationalist 40s' fashion of these mythical little 424!