La ferrovia che non si arrendeva

For thirty years, the municipalities of the Val Camonica had lived with the threat constant that the their railway would be closed. Every two or three years, some bureaucrat from Milan announced that the accounts did not balance, that the passengers were too few, that the buses would be been a solution more rational. The valley would respond each time with petitions, demonstrations, letters to the newspapers.

The line Brescia-Edolo has existed since 1897. One hundred and two kilometers of track that rise gently along the river Oglio, cross twenty villages and dozens of forests thick, as far as to reaching the foot of the Tonale. Built in an era in which the valleys alpine were considered places remote and menacing, this railway represented for the communities local more more than a means of transport: it was a true door to the world.

In the years Nineties, however, the wind had changed. The lines secondary, throughout all of Italy, were considered of branches dry to cut. It was said that they were uneconomical, that the future belonged to the high speed, that the valleys alpine did not could not afford the luxury of a their own railway. The stations were left to decay, the trains arrived in delay chronically, and the passengers diminished year after year.

Rinaldo Pesenti, railwayman near retirement of Cedegolo, remembers well those years. « It seemed that they wanted us to die slowly », he says seated in a cafe near the station. « When I started to work, in the years Sixties, this line transported every day hundreds of workers toward the factories of Brescia. Then the factories have closed, the young people themselves from here have gone, and we are left us, old people and stubborn ».

The turning point came in 2017, when a group of young administrators local decided that they could not of it stand any more. They would stop from defending themselves only, would go on the offensive. They began to present to the Region a plan of revival complete, that included investments in new trains, renovation of the stations, electrification complete. They obtained also funds European, with a tenacity that surprised many observers.

The idea central, bold, was that the railway should not had to only survive, but had to become the heart of a new economy of the valley. They wanted to focus on tourism slow, on those who wanted to discover the carvings rock prehistoric UNESCO heritage, the villages medieval, the trails alpine. They introduced trains with spaces for the bicycles, passes combined train+museums, agreements with the mountain huts.

Even the language changed. It was no longer spoken any longer of « dry branch », but of « tourist railway of the Alps », of « green infrastructure », of « sustainable mobility ». They were the same tracks, the same passengers, but the way in which they were told was completely different. The narratives matter, above all when one is dealing of convincing offices distant to spend money public.

The first trains new, electric and silent, arrived in 2022. The old trains diesel, which stank of diesel fuel and of old, were gradually retired. The stations were repainted, the tracks replaced, the crossings at level made safer to standard. When the line renewed was inaugurated, in Cedegolo there was a celebration of the village with the band, the speeches of the mayor, the children who received as a gift a small locomotive of wood.

Today, three years later the revival, the numbers give reason to those stubborn ones. The passengers have doubled compared to 2017. The weekends summer, the trains come doubled in number because they could not manage to contain the cyclists who board at the low-altitude stations down in the valley headed to the trails in high altitude. The schools organize field trips by train, the restaurants near the stations have reopened.

But what that surprises the most Pesenti are not are the numbers, but the atmosphere. « When I was active in service, the passengers boarded in silence, almost apologizing for existing. It was like if they knew they were being a species going extinct. Now, they board laughing, with their bikes, with their children, they look out the window as if they were discovering something of new », he says. « That is the real victory ».

The success of the Brescia-Edolo has not been passed unnoticed. Other valleys Italian, which had lived a situation similar, have begun to imitate its the model. It is spoken now of « Camonica model » in circles of transport rail. Even the Ministry, which until a ten years ago preached the suppression of lines secondary, has changed language: now they speak of « valorization », of « heritage rail », of « diffuse network ».

Pesenti, who listens to all this with a smile ironic, is not is an optimist. « The battles are never are ever won for good », he says. « In twenty years, someone will return to say that the railway does not make sense, that the trains are old, that the buses electric would be more modern. And we will have to start over to explain. The railways are never are ever safe. One must that every generation them save anew anew ».

While we speak, the train of five thirty PM passes slowly in front of the cafe, headed toward Edolo. It is one of the trains new, blue and white, with the logo of the valley painted on its sides. Inside, one can glimpse passengers: a family with their backpack for trekking, a student who looks at his phone, an old lady who looks outside. Pesenti it greets with a nod barely perceptible, an habit of thirty years ago, that he has not has ever lost.