Società Veneta Ferrovie.

This is our wish for you all, tono!

 

A little post just to confirm that we are all safe well, hoping our friends on other countries are safe and in good healt.

This is a picture of Primolano in the fifties of the twentieth century



The squared spot at the end of the rightmost track is an inspection pit. The pit is still there, even if filled: finding it while laying the new track left us no other choice than leave it filled. Anyway an initial inspection tells that it was built together with the shed. Maybe, in the future, when the museum will be completed, there will be work for some Indiana Jones wannabe. I keep the showel ready.

 

Restarting! We were lucky, our region was blessed by the luck of capable people, included some co-workers of mine at work, who enabled the set up of an efficient monitoring of the disease. And no one of us is missing. This image of a WWI field hospital that is in Primolano is a tribute to those who kept us safe!



It will not something explosive yet, we are still using PPE against Covid, we did not restarted things like the kitchen, so each one has to take its food from home. But we are restarting. for now is all matter of catching up with the pending maintenance, starting from mowing the grass and all the other plants that grew undisturbed since February. It is not the "Welcome to the jungle" we faced in 2006, luckily, as you can see:



(Hey, where are gone the 424 and the rolling stock that were on that spur???)

Nevertheless, the priority is "Operation Orange Agent 2020", removing the overgrown plants that litter the ballast and mow the grass everywhere else.





Other projects have been restarted, but, as you can see, also the turntable pit has its not-so-Eden garden . Stay tuned! We are back in track, SARS-COV-2 is still a threat to be reckoned but the signal is at "Caution" and not "Danger".
By the way, you can see in the picture above where the DE424 and the other rolling stock has been shunted when we completed the mechanical part of the turntable restoration. Once "Operation Orange Agent" is over (the name is a joke, nothing illegal or dangerous will be used!) and the yard is again tidy, the turntable will get its final coat of paint and the boards for the bridge. We still hope to have the chance to run an Open Day event in 2020 with our 880.001 steaming along our tracks. For more informations, stay tuned!

Yes, we are back!

 

Back to work. Mowing the grass, tiding up the shed

and while I write some other volunteers might be painting the turntable (if Jupiter Pluvios grants his permission!).

On Friday May 29th, 2020, the last of the freight wagons acquired from Ferrovie Emilia Romagna (FER) left Emilia (Rovereto station, on the Ferrara-Codigoro line) and was moved to Primolano. A few pictures of the moving:

The


A picture in Rovereto (FE) station - for those wondering, there is also a Rovereto south of Trento.



Leaving the station.


Preparing for download - Author Marco Bruzzo, © SVF 2020



Back on the rails



Another picture of the downloading. Take, if you can a closer look to the truck in the left... It will receive the place it deserves, is a pre-steel wrought and cast iron wheel.



Finally at home!

 

This is a detail of the axlebox above. We call them "Pig Face" referring to the shape of the pig nose. What is nowdays not so common is the builder logo:


Personally, is the second axlebox I see sporting this logo - the other one was squared and was chopped some years ago. It even sported the SV logo instead of FS one. The presence of the FS logo on the axleboxes might suggest that the then Ferrovie Padane bought it from FS.

 

Cleaning up!

Another working weekend for SVF volunteers, ans this time the work where not just to catch up with...

We took care of small details like this hook to keep the shed doors open


and large ones, this is the turntable being receiving the final coat of RAL 7021 Black Gray



tidying up inside



(please note the short baulk road stretch) and outside


Large amont of hardware awaiting restoration or other works has been packed up

and stored in a van, an ancient Società Veneta freight wagon more thatn one hundred year old.


We just need to wait for the end of COVID-19 restrictions to fully restart!


PLEASE NOTE!

SVF needs to raise founds to bring in Primolano two peculiar little vehicles that were part of the Ferrovia Basso Sebino. They lost the space where those little jewels were parked and, in order to preserve them, FBS choosed to hand these vehicles to SVF, entrusting us with the task to preserve them and the restoration work already carried on by FBS. We in SVF are almost overwhelmed by this display of trust. But we must confess that this lock-down prevented us from raising funds with our Open Door events. At this time we are 1,050.00 € sort to the amount required to move the two vehicles.

Therefore forgive me if I appeal once more to the generosity of the readers of this forum readers. You can donate with PayPal (there is a button on the http://www.societavenetaferrovie.it homepage, or you can use a wire transfer (you can find our IBAN here: https://www.societavenetaferrovie.it/donazioni/).

Thank you very much!

 

We completed paintwork on the turntable, the final colour is a dark grey that made someone talk of a Panzerkampfdrehscheibe, and finally received a supply of wooden planks gifted by the nearby sawmill.

Time to pass the impregnating agent, then an SVF fellow will deploy his professional carpentry tools and we will complete the turntable deck. Hopefully for the few open day that we will stage this year.

 

Uh Oh, I forgot. Follow the link above to see the full picture.

The large pile of "steel rings" are the old 880.001 tytres, but on the right of the picture, almost completly cuto off there is a very interesting old item... You see enough to guess what it was. Who tries? I will post the "right" (according to the evidences) answer with a better picture soon.

 

(Copyleft G.U. Lauri -SVF - Distributed under GNU Free Documentation License)

In the previous post I told you that I was going to post a better picture and an answer. Sunday we had the usual summer barbecue - social distancing and face masks - and I had the chance to take a better picture of this.
This is a wrought iron/cast iron wheel built on the (supposedly expired) patent of G. Stephenson, with a cast iron center and wrought iron spokes, ring and tyre. In 1857 Mr. Bessemer converter was not associated yet with a reliable steel production project, so this technique was still in use. It should have been a bearing axle in a steam engine, less likely in a tender or other rolling stock, I suppose.

Having several fellows gathered in Primolano we were also able to do the final touches to the procedures we'll use in the forthcoming open days, where social restrictions will be still mandatory. On the previous saturday work had progressed on the turntable:

(Copyleft G.U. Lauri -SVF - Distributed under GNU Free Documentation License)

The planks were laid and an insured member can even do a careful walk, but the stops for the planks and other metal plates had their paint drying on Sunday.


(© Andrea Vallieri - SVF)

The builder plate returned on the locomotive dome. These plates are subject to theft by that kind of enthusiasts very jealous of their tropies, very noisy in asking for rolling stock to be preserved, but never to be found when it's time to contribute to preservation with either money, items/spare parts or work.

It is interesting that Mr. Ernesto Breda, who created the "Società Italiana Ernesto Breda" workshop after purchasing pre-existing and Swiss founded workshops, was a man from the Padua province (Campo San Martino) and has among his business partners his elder cousin Vincenzo Stefano Breda, coming from a place even close to Padua (Limena) and was the founder of Società Veneta, the company in onour of we named our association and the company who built the Italian leg of the Valsugana railway.


(© Andrea Zanettin - SVF)

Our 880 visiting all the rails in our yard. This siding has become our coal depot (see the bags on the right). On the right the living quarters of the shed.


(© Marco Bruzzo - SVF)

And here what coud be in the future a small Diesel freight train with our rolling sock, much of this is awaiting restoration. Please note that the two wagons not in the consist are both more than one hundred years old.

And on August 2nd we will be back. Wish us luck, we too need to raise founds...

 

Last Sunday we restarted our Open Days. Due some bureaucratic problems, we did not lit the 880, that was thus still inactive. The important thing was running the Open Day and test our procedures to protect visitors from SARS-Cov-2 spread.

The weather forecast was tragic, but I think that Checco, a SVF fellow that passed away recently, did something to grant us a shining sun. Thank you Checco, we'll miss you!



As I said, we took al mandatory procedures requested for public safety, our visitors were welcomed by several safety notices

this included maximum admittance, face mask and social distancing prescroption and such. We provided also separate entry and exit path and the guys at the reception desk checked body temperature of each visitor.


(Face Mask is required whenever you can not keep the minimum distance of one meter from other people, cohabiting family members excluded.)

The attendance was low, mainly due the tragic forecast,



but we could show to the few visitors our restored turn table, with the new planks of the walkway trimmed and fitted.



and the Sogliola shunted the 880 on the turntable for a little show that the visitors really enjoyed. For many of them it was the first time they saw a locomotive being turned. Except for starting - and then stopping - the rotation, when the engine is well balanced on the turntable, a very little effor is required to turn the engine.


I hope you enjoyed the sunny pictures of our "Rivendell", next open days will have the 880 in pressure, and our tired engineer will have even more work to do

 

These pictures predates the one of the open day, and show the finishing touches to the walkway of the turntable.

 

Memories... The shed here is before the restoration that will start a few months later.

https://youtu.be/5Eeq3T0IzAY

 

On September 6th we staged our first Open Day with the fully operational 880 engine. It was a success despite the ongoing limitations due the pandemic. It was also the first time we officially shown the Museum logo
and the volunteers wore the new t-shirt meant to make us easily distinguishable



The star of the day was of course the 880 001, for the first time running in public on her own steam,


It was hard to contain the curiosity of the attendance, and that was a little problem (little thanks to the very limited number of hot heads) since in the Italian law system it is not enough to mark a section as dangerous, you can be liable not to preventing someone ignore the danger singals.

Anyway, in the picture below there are no hot heads . This is a sample of the amount of people we had during the whole opening.


The turnatble above is still missing some iron plate that are still taking their paint coat.
Belive it or not, for some people it was the first time they saw a steam locomotive moving under her own steam, for some more people it was the first time they saw live a locomotive on the turntable.



Thanks to the excellent restoration of the platform turning the engine is not this difficult.



And the turntable allowed this not so common scene, with the engine facing the shed (usually 880 001 enters the shed rear bunker first. Using fully our yards we staged some shunting that simulated the arrival of a train in terminus (with the shed acting as a station),



with a pilot engine (our Sogliola) shunting away the wagons



to let the enginne then going to the platform and then back to its consist

.

And finally a video with our engine running!

 

This is a splendid achievement, well done to all of you.
A very handsome engine indeed.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

 

On October 2nd, 2020, two new items joined the SVF rolling stock fleet.

The story of how these engines arrived in primolano is something that shines like an honor medal. These engines were part of the collection of another association, Ferrovia del Basso Sebino -Southern Sebino Railway-, an association older than SVF that, having saved the dismissed branch line from Palazzolo sull'Oglio to Paratico Sarnico in Brescia province (this map can't show you the line since Google has no public transport service to report, but if you take a look you can see the line, the route starts from Palazzolo station and ends in Paratico Sarnico station, near Iseo Lake. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Sta...b22e1e5ca251da7e!2m2!1d9.8949!2d45.602376!3e2).

They were successful staging several tourisict trains both with preserved DMUs and steam trains even before Fondazione FS existed, and they had a track available for their rolling stock, that includet the two we are talking about. All their successes did nothing to prevent them to lose the availability of the track, so they first moved their collection to the site of a PW construction company, De Aloe costruzioni that acquired some items. But FBS member decided to assign to SVF their remaining Badoni build shunter nicknamed Cubo due its shape, and Messers Cristian Galli and Ilario Valotti likely decided to give us the wonderful inspection light draisine Fiat 500 T whose body shared many parts with the road minivan Fiat 850 and that was powered by the same engine used on the Fiat 500 G "Giardiniera" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_500#500_Giardiniera_(1960–1968)) car, because they trust us as future caretakers for these engines.

We are flattened by this choice, and forgive me if I am proud of being in the number. But let's stop fussing about and let me show you some pictures.


Loading the Cubo in Aloe company yard


Just arrived in Primolano under the usual pouring rain. We sometimes refer humorously to Primolano as Piovarolo (piova means rain) from the old comedy movie "Destinazione Piovarolo" (Assigned to Piovarolo), starred from Antonio de Curtis (known by the stage name Totò), a prince from Naples that become a successful comedian and actor. In that movie he played the role of a somewhat clumsy railway enthusiast that classifies last in the public contest for a job as station master in FS.


Reversing the truck to unload the engines.


Finally ready to download! The 500 T looks brand new!

And now something about these engines.

The 500 T has 1 A wheelset, one single driving place. The engine used is that shown in the picture below
from a 1960 car magazine.


And now some word for our young Luca "The Sentinel" he lost the delivery of the Cubo and the 500T but wasted no time and prepared two very useful movable scotch blocks

 

What a beautiful location and obviously a lot of hard and successful work by the volunteers. Best wishes for your future!

 

First of all, thank you to all who appreciated SVF work!

And now the last open day in 2020. We were forced to run it under pouring rain, and this limited the audience to 40/50 die hard visitors who also endured a long trip to see the 880 and the new rolling stock arrived in Primolano. These visitors really deserved our effort.

No matter the forecast, the engine fire was lit on Friday Night by a determined young crew.


The Saturday was sunny, so the volunteers carried on the last work without any rain. But Sunday... Staging the show, despite the rain


More shunting, Sogliola and 880 will clear the track for the Cube to complete the passenger consist


The newly complete passage, our staging almost set, lots of rain...


If someone wonders why we humorously refer to Primolano as Piovarolo (something like Rainville,
but with references to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_Piovarolo or https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047986/). Really a lovely day for ducks!


All our active traction units in one picture


For the future? Firs of all, get this pesky SARS-COV-2 critter out of the way. We kept strict anti covid regulations during the open days, but we expect some more restriction in the near future. We did not postponed the Open Day, hoping for sunnier weather, mostly due the possibility to face harder restrictions. We had very little visitors, but we are happy indeed, they were far more than expected, they were very pleased of what was on display, despite the heavy rain, we could even gather some new member.

And we are stubborn optimistic. To the next post with a sunny picture. We'll be back!

 

Despite the cold


our volunteers work on out engines.

880.001 has her boiler emptied and cleaning continued. Our engine is one of those in best shape here in Italy, and we work to keep her in the best possible shape. So a lot of cleaning up and mothballing is performed each Saturday.

 

I am sure you remember the yellow FIAT 500 T motor-draisine and the FBS 209 002 railway tractor, built by Antonio Badoni Lecco as ABL 4712 and nicknamed "Cubo" (Cube) due its shape. Riccardo Palma, one of our most active fellow found also the "full name" of this engine: ABL IV NLR HT 209.002.

Sadly these engines lost their home track and the Ferrovie Basso Sebino granted to SVF the custody of these beloved engines.

The nice yellow motor-draisine is in perfect shape, as it just left the factory with freshly applied FS markings. The FBS 209 002 is perfectly operational but needs mode care. In these pictures from our fellow Michele Goennheimer, Riccardo was more than happy to provide this care.







But Riccardo did also some homework he documented on a quite famous social network.

Dynamo FIAT DC 115/24/7/3 4044390 8G 67 before and after his homework.



Secoond homework: electric engine FIAT C125 - 4/24,, Ord. Nr. 809740, Factory Nr. 057835 (Riccardo may provide all the techical details, but my limited technical English skills can't translate them, sorry!):

 

Sorry, this one refused to enter in the previous post. Chances are that she got upset because my lack of skills.