In 1913 ws built and opened a tramway line of an approximately lenght of 4km that connected the large Lana village (constituted from the three fractions Lana di Sopra, di Sotto e Lana di Mezzo) with the Bolzano-Merano railroad, to those times - by the moment we are still in Austrian territory - managed from the SudBahn. The line was at normal gauge and electrified in d.c. at 750V. An intense traffic of people and goods was planned, to ease the numerous fruit working and collection plants. For this reason the tramway was equipped of a motor park constituted from 3 engines for the passengers with 2 axles and wooden body and from 2 locos always with 2 axles with center cab. All the units were built from the Simmering/Siemens-Schuckert and were characterize from a particular trolley - as aspect very recalling the pantographs of our threefase system - to guarantee however a good caption of current in spite of a not stretched catenary type. Only the locos moreover were equip with two type of coupling systems: tramway funnels and mesh and buffers of railway type. This in order to guarantee without problems the abundant freight traffic previewed, made using railway wagons. They weighed 20 tons and they had the maximum speed of 20km/h. Finally there was a scale-wagon with wood floor for the maintenance of the overhead line. The exercise was studied to have coincidences in station Postal (future station FS) with all the trains between Bolzano and Merano. This was articulated in 18/20 runs per day, with the first departure from Lana di Sopra around the 4.00 a.m. The service continued also between the wars and also after the annexation of the SudTirolo to Italy. Although this the exercise liabilities - due to the competition with trucks and to the ancient units - obligated the owner society to shut down the passenger service already in July 1959, on all the line. This carried in 1962 to the demolition of the line between Lana di Sopra and Lana di Sotto, where the freights didn't circulate. This piece of line had properly tramway characteristics and the terminus was in common to the tramway coming from Merano, with meter gauge. This last one tramway - closed however in those same years - had been initially proposed like alternative to the construction of our line, with the use of adapter-undercarriages or the predisposition of one track with 3 rails. These hypotheses were discarded and was chosen therefore the Lana-Postal. The line left Lana Postal FS, where the tramway had a small yard of 2 tracks right in the opposite to FS yard, with the covered freight building in common. It passed therefore to the outside of the FS building and with a short wye served the stock plant of Zuegg. Then, after passing an old mechanical signal, the railroad described a tightened left curve in order to then crossing the FS rails of the Bolzano-Merano. This crossing - once therefore common to many Italian tramways - was builted so that FS metals did not have interruptions, since those ones of the tramway, through appropriate guide rails, carried trains of the tramway to pass over FS rails with their own wheels, clearly to a speed less than slow! Also the overhead line FS-LP was a complicated apparatus of crossing at 90° and the trams were eased in passing this section thanks also to the particular pantograph of which we have already spoken. After the crossing the more difficult point of the line was met: the metallic bridge on the Adige. This - because of the narrow spaces - was a iron span with curve profile and therefore with a strong slope to scale from trains of LP (50 for thousand!). In case of trains composed from more than 6 wagons the double traction was a must. This bridge is one of last trace still existing, here the photo. Come down the bridge, the line until Lana di Sotto was along a side of the street, separated with protections, for 1,8km. In the moment of closure of the other part of line - instead in road center - the 3 passenger units were scrapped, while the freight traffic remained the only source of traffic for the short tramway. But although the cares about railway things in this angle of Italy, the road haulage began also here to win traffic, until provoking the abolition also of the freight traffic, with the last run on the afternoon of the 30 April 1974. The two locos have been therefore recovered in the Lana di Sotto shed, waiting for future decisions and to the beginning even the tramway track was not dismantled. The trucks in order to transport the Zuegg products from the plant to the station must complete absurd maneuvers and use however the roadrail trailers for the transport... of railway wagons! The hopes came all dispel when in 1980 began the removal of the railroad in more points, while the locos had to be parked to the open to let parking in the shed the street tractors. On the large square of Postal was realized a parking lot, while the trackage near Lana di Sotto was used to widen road and sidewalks. Of the terminus station instead nothing is remaining: the large yard is vanished and the wooden shed has been demolished. In this phase came new moves of the locos and the scale-wagon - another survivor - with the use of roadrail trailers. They were placed to the inside of the warehouse of the National Fire Departments - in Lana di Sopra - in repaired but invisibile position, where they remained until little ago. Then in 1993 loco I was arranged externally and exposed in an exibhition near the inferior terminal of the cable for the Renon, with a rack loco of the same tramway for Renon, that now is closed in the shed of Collalbo. The loco I is returned from there in its hiding place. Loco II is the most visible, oncontrary, because from November 1998 it's exposed like monument - after a partial restoration - in the center of Lana di Sotto. For the others two units the TMB - the Museum of the Transports of the Tirolo to Innsbruck - have manifested an interest: they already conserve the other rack loco of the Renon, but it's soon to any decisions.
