A ghost railway
In Sardinian territory everything it's possible. The fascination is the mystery of intact places and the romantic of some railroads that fight against modernity maintaining a character and an originality that elsewhere has gone. Travelling on coaches of the 30's former SFSM towed by a noisy small LDe in breathtaken landscapes can happen only here. And this was the spirit with I introduced myself in that day of May in station to Macomer, fronting exactly that one of Trenitalia. An Edmonson ticket for Nuoro cost truly a little. Waiting my train were few persons and although this the consist was of all respect: loco plus 3 coaches. A herd of noisy and uneducated students would have taken of onslaught these cars in order to return from the Nuoro' schools towards the countries of the inside until Macomer. The travel proceeds calm on the sharp curves and the small stations parade like on a film projected to the windows. I promised myself to make an intermediate stop in Tirso, to overwhelm a curiosity and to verify the exactitude of some informations. In Tirso i came down opening the heavy door of my "vesuviana" and already I was observing the landscape around the station. A lost large yard in the middle of nowhere, between hills and little trees with the first country - Illorai - far away at least 9km. Tirso in fact is not a locality, but it's the name of a river that passes little more ahead and the few houses near the station are named in the town "Station of the Tirso". The reason of existence of this great yard therefore (5 passing tracks, a dead track for goodses and an unusual track that goes around the station building from the external large square to then refer itself to the opposite yard) have to be searched in the past of junction point for the dead Tirso-Chilivani line. This line constructed in the 1888 in order to connect in an ideal net the line of Nuoro to the north of the island, was long 79 km, snaking between beautiful landscapes as well as how much desert. So few were the countries served by the 950mm railroad owned from the SFSS and then FCS. It was closed in 1969 to every type of traffic, but its ghost resists still today in good part. Many kilometers of railroad are still resting and nearly all bridges and the civil works resist to the time. Strange is the layout of the rails in the station of Tirso, place in which I found myself to the search of this ghost. In station I already remained struck from the ruins left to disgregate on rails 4 and 5: in row there were parked old Bauchieros (typical coaches with wooden case stored with the arrival of former SFSM units), a couple of Emmine of 1934 (constructed in the 1934 from Carminati & Toselli and OM) and above all seated silent the three Littorine Fiat of 1935 with the characteristic facade with the big radiator, matriculations 40.11 - 13. They would be well in the museum of Cagliari, inasmuch as still today all these units are still there... One fast reconnaissance of the large yard under the eyes of the Manager that asked me information on my interest. He told some anecdote to me on the closed line and introduced to me a railwayman with not less than 105 years: he was its grandfather. He greets me, I headed towards the west part of the yard, where with a switch began the line for Chilivani. I remained strained that the layout of the switches did not allow a direct service Macomer-Chilivani (allowed only with an opportune link completely outside, cutting the station) neither Nuoro-Chilivani (if not with complicated shuntings). I walked along the abandoned railroad, than hardly beyond the station it appeared truly bad shaped: the tracks corroded by years of loose, ties dry and cracked and the ballast move and taken away by rain. With surprise after some hundred of meters I discover a wagon abandoned and an other and an other again... A long forgotten train that snaked for hundred meters. Some completely decayed with only the metallic skeleton, others with plants and trees grown to the inside, other rolled upside and without parts : distressing feeling took me. Still more ahead i noticed the familiar shape of an ADe: 07, it was partially burnt and boarded. Endured behind, with some bushes grown in the wooden case and thin latten, it was an other Emmina of 1934. And then still wagons and wagons. I continued until when the amount of bushes on the roadbed did not prevent me to walk and returned on my steps thinking to a short mixed train hauled from one of those steam locos... The ghost of a railroad that doesn't want to disappear.