Just right to begin
It's not so long i'm taking train pictures. I started with medium results in 1987, during one of the first railway events made up in Luino. By then i was just a boy and i already knew a lot about trains, being a reader since first numbers of "iTreni" magazine and being captured overall by the quality of the photographic part of the mag. But between saying and doing, in the middle there is the sea...and i saw passing away again some years, before i could realized to take by myself a camera in my hands going taking pictures to trains. It was 1984...if i remember back to those years i'm ready to cry what i missed: last lines before "Signorile" closures (even with the beautifull line 950 mm gauge in Sicily...), a lot of old time rolling stock and an old atmosphere logn gone under rules of the modernization. I remeber a bit before the little white and yellow trains in via Palmanova to Vimercate and Vaprio (lines closed in 1980), freights passing thru Lambrate trailed by old E.428, diesels bound to Mantova and Ferrara with ALn.773 dmus under the archs in Milano Centrale, ALn.990 dmus running on the Pavia-Codogno line and much more. Otherwise i was still attending last years of graduate school and a medium reflex camera was out, far from my economic possibilities by then erased by my passion for 1:87 scale models. In 1988 i bought my Yashica with a medium tele 35/70 mm and i started to feel the emotion of fixing and stopping time on a slide, because right this is the beautifull of photography. Living in Milano i had a best way to improve my capacity : following trams! ATM's reality ever fascinate me, with that variety of tram circulating, with the Witts, the Jumbos and overall with the last interurbans, with that appareance more similar to trains than to tramcars. So i started tripping all over the city by foot or by bycicle searching for the best views and corners along tram lines. I arrived - sure with many fatigue - until Limbiate and Desio by cicle, following "bloccato" trains or Reggio Emilia units on the interurban lines. And it was a good training! Nothing best as traffic jam around tramcars could teach me my patience and my waiting ability. An essential gift for a railway photographer, who waits hours in a right place the right train with a right light. I remained so closed in my tramway world in Milano until 1990, documenting in many ways lines and even cars gone after just 11 years...Meanwhile i entered a modellistic club, where i knew some other photographers and railfans. With them i started to understand what shot at and how to move in a railway reality still various at that time. Thanks to suggestions of these friends i jumped the period of first mistakes so common to many railfan devoted to railway pictures: shoting massively just to most colored trains and more modern ones. Many i know infact are now crying their disattention in following just this or that kind of train, maybe freshly in service (on my mind come E.632/633, ALe.724 and double floor coaches), leaving away what were already vanishing from italian rails. Last E.428's, E.626's, locals made up by "centoporte and corbellini " coaches, ALn.772's or D.341/342's were right there to be retired from services closing an era made by evolutions and techincal revolutions by now turned ancient. Instead, i was addressed quickly on the older material and i followed without a pause E.626, original E.444, Ocarine and ALe.883, until scrapping started to be more and more massive. In those first travels made only by train i went around my region, on lines to Lecco, Carnate, Como and Molteno. On this last line i applied my personal method in organizing photo trips. With a normal train, i jumped out at this or at that station and then i waked from here for kilometers along the rail until covering near all the line and touching all the stations, taking pictures to trains in many locations of this line. Passion for photos took me up, so i started to jump school sometimes, to take photos of trains not running in week-end days, like freights on the line from Lecco to Como... I jumped school even to go shoting last services of ALe.883 in Valtellina or along Como's lake river, again here under suggestions of same friends with whom i remained a travel companion in many times until today, after a lot of kilometers ran all over Italy. It was Andrea Strini who directed me to a little change in my views, coming with me on lines around Pavia by then under closures due to heavy renewal works. ALn.773, Breda 2400's and other trains became my focus, in landscapes totally diverse from my first ones. It was easy going there: by then we were still in a good period, when many local trains ran even on Sunday and didn't compel me to boring week ends like now. I travelled again on trains and i had organized my adventures in every detail: i had every time my timetable and some millimeter paper sheets which made me famous in my restricted club of photo friends. Infact before adventuring along a line i was used to drawn down its graphic timetable - made in a familiar mode - just to have rapidly the situations on all the railway, trains positions, meeting points, eventual freigths and more. As years passed by and with my first job payments, i began to wide my actions out the limits i was respecting until then for fear and mybe for poor ambition. First with my fellahs Felisa, Zanin and Canale and then by myself i travelled in Veneto and Trentino, in Toscana and Emilia. I saw all new places, new shots and finally new trains, including more private railways different by my preferred ones FNM and SNFT. But photo wishes had no limits, so i started to spend all my vacations travelling all over Italy: 2 or 3 weeks in Puglia, Calabria and Sardegna, Lazio or Abruzzo. Deeply stimolated by some places i saw, i went back there many times in short periods, as for example in Sardegna where for 5 times in 3 years i organized photo charters mostly frequented by me and railmen on FDS. Now i can say i have built a fairly good dimension archive, but sure i've not decided to stop my activity, which give me still emotions and satisfactions. We had to getting used to graffiti, to the railway police always ignorant, to new and boring colors, to a more modern rolling stock...but the will to hold my reflex and leave...that one is still the same. Now i travel by car, searching more selectively places and trains and i get annoied by always the same locations; i have a patient wife who follows me in my trips and sometimes who takes some pictures herself and a beautifull baby girl i hope never will become a photographer (!!!). But that picture, long awaited in the middle of a field looking for that train still fuels my adrenaline like in the past...and for this i have to thank who in the beginning drove me right in my newborn hobby. Thanks.