Società Veneta Ferrovie.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!​

SVF wishes to thank all the donors that helped us in restoring the L914 "Sogliola" engine.
As you can see she is copletly restored.

​

As you can see from the picture, she received extra buffers. These are necessary because the original buffer you can see in the previous posts were meant to be used with wagons with space to allow the wheels of our engine go below the carriage itself, but when our sogliola pushes the 880 there is not such clearance and all pushing should be borne by the coupling hook (that is meant to bear pulling forces). The buffer are mounted on the buffer beam by means of two adaptor blocks that provide further spacing and solve the problem of the mismatching bolt holes in the buffers and in the beam.

Our Sogliola has already begun to prove herself "a very useful engine" supporting out ongoing restoration and cleanup works.

 

What is new in Primolano?

There were not many post during the winter, Primolano is a cold place in winter, nevertheless some brave volunteers completed our sogliola. But let's start this report with this picture from Luca, 14 years old, one of our younger (and eager) members.



About our activities.
In the winter, we used the "model railway" tool to introduce ourselves to a even broader attendance. In two occasions we staged a layout where we let children from the attendance to drive one of our model trains. And no, nothing compares a child "Wow!".

In the first days of March SVF had its stand in the Verona Model fair, that was a chance to tell about our work to even more visitors and to collect some founds, then we had our annual Association Meeting where the past activities were reviewed and the "new strategic plan" was explained to the members. And our next goal is the restoration of the turntable that has already begun.

But before we started working on the turntable, we received another item of our rolling stock collection, the 1906 built GKm van. This wagon requires restoration, but is now the older item in our rolling stock collection.



And now about the turntable. Andrea, the metal wizard that rebuilt some parts of the Sogliola, prepared a set of metal spacers and supports to be used to support the the turntable itself once being lifted by means of hydraulic jacks.



and yesterday the platform was lift and the 4 wheels with their bearings were removed. First the tools and parts were moved to the work site, courtesy of our Sogliola .

And here are the spacers and jacks in action:



And this is one of the wheels to be removed for servicing;


Pulling out the wheels was not easy, years of missing maintenance took their tool and rust was everywhere. But by science (cooling spray that makes the parts shrink, chain hoist) and brute force (maul blows) did the work.

(end of part 1)

 

(part 2)

After removing the wheels, the next task was checking the best way to strip the old paint and clean away the rust and removing the plates that keep the wooden planks of the platform 'bridge' in place.

(stripping)

(removing the plates)

The next tasks will be restoring the whell bushings, stripping paint and rust (will use again the cup brushes), repaint the platform, restore the wooden planks of the walkways, restore the wheel and finally lowering the platform, ready again for service.

And now some more pictures of the volunteers at work and our rolling stock collection:


Planning how to remove the wheel axles, with the bearings stuck in the rust.


Our original SV wagons, the GKm, the snowplug, an E wagon and the P wagon (the last one, far away), already stripped of the old planks. Please note the double point on the left, built in the late 19th century.



Work area panorama. The closest freight wagon is the ferry train. Compare how it is narrower than its continental counterpart.
Again the platform during the plates removal and the ferry train and the parcels service wagon.

 

On April 6th, 2019, SVF officially unveiled its last restoration work, the Sogliola shunting engine (National Preservation had the news first ).

In this clip, by Sergio Bonantini, the Sogliola does its first entry:



Our president, Federico Rigobello -first on the right0, explained to the former majors in the valley (most municipalities merged together) explained the works done and showed the results. Then our esteemed guests had a chance to ride the engine. (Unless specified otherwise, all these pictures come from http://blog.tuttotreno.it/31493-sogliola-in-movimento-a-primolano/, © DuegiEditrice)


Then the "Team Badoni", the most dedicated volunteers received the special T-Shirt printed solely for this group of heroes the whole team with our president is portrayed here:




In the afteroon, fun time. Having a sunting engine available allowed us to stretch the wheels of out steam engine and the 2 axles coach. It was the first chance to have a ride on that wonderful coach.



Finally, a short youtube clip with our steam engine bein shunt, passing nearby the coach.



And next sunday (April 19th, 2019) starts the new Open Day season!

 

It was an April full of events, About two week after being officially presented to the public, Sogliola starred in our firs open day. The rain keep many visitors away, but the brave ones that visited the Primolano locomotive depot were greeted by a new arrangement of our rolling stock, with all the coaches aligned behind the engine and visitors could pass from one coach to the other through the gangway.
The bike-draisine had is usual success, but all the visitors were really pleased to see our sogliola pulling our restored freight wagons.



By the way, this is a picture from our Sogliola history, by Alessandro Muratori and hosted on Photorail (http://www.photorail.it/phr3-gli updates/articoli2008/gennaio 2008.htm)



That was our Sogliola back in 1976, in a short line duty.

After the Open Day, the donations and income from gadgets allowed us to bring another wagon in Primolano, it run up to the eighties of last century, but about thirty years of neglect really hit hard this Eklo wagon:


Our hunger for good planks continues to increaase!

And today we finally received a gift from Derwent Valley Light Railway, the vacuum brake hoses for our Fb wagon:







Now our wagon will receive most of its markings (except maybe the registration number, since the new one does not exists yet). Further work pictures will follow.

Turntable: the work goes on, today both the bridge metal plates and the pit concrete and stone parts where cleaned with a pressure washer.

Tomorrow more volunteer will entertain the public of the Spring Fest in the St. Anthony in Arcella parish(1) with live steam train models, and in the meanwhile we will explain our activities.


(1) In Padua we have two St. Anthony churches, The St. Anthony basilica, that is known simply as "Il Santo" - the Saint, since St. Anthony is the saint par excellence in Padua, the other one, in the parth of the city north of the railway station, was built over St. Anthony death place. Despite containing several districts, that parth of the city is globally know as Arcella, even if Arcella is only one of the districts.
And yes, my logname or alias is bound to St. Anthony through a pinball like series of "bounces"

 

May 2019 passed like it was depicted in Blade Runner. No day without rain.

Our May open day was a Dunkerque, no matter less than 50 visitors challenged the bad weather to visit us (and some of them did quite a long trip, we held the line, offering the best we could to our visitors and they all were pleased.

Take a look. The arrow points to the freezing level, that white thing is snow.

Works on the turntable continued and continues, exploting any no-rain moment and even bright sun. There were little contributions from a random "cuciniere"


and larger ones



A call for workers has been raised for next week end.

We had a second event in St. Anthony in Arcella parish, this time we took HO models and we were surprised to see how many girls (even a mother) showed up for a turn-of-duty driving a model train, many more than one!

(Click for the full picture)

That's all for now. June will be busy!

 

Me idiot!

I forgot something that happened on May 31st: The "Circolare Territoriale" (territorial circular) CT 8/2019, valid starting from May 31st 2019 at 11:00 CEST, announces some changes for Primolano Railway Station:

Point 4, Primolano Station

• Activation of the new link "Ferrovie Turistica della Valbrenta"
• Rail track changes
• Block & Interlock device changes

​

The document continues 2ith the detailed descriptiomn of the link, the gate, the points, the keys blocking the points and one of our double slip points becomes officially Point 202 of Primolano Railway Station. Our Primolano premises are officially part of the Italian Railway Network.

It seems a small thing.

But its importance is far larger than what initially seems, starting from it being the first official railway document that quotes the name of our touristic railway project.

 

Well done. Dealing with Italian bureaucracy is not easy and to now be officially connected is great news. Complimenti!

 

It was a busy week end for SVF.

During the week, Pierluigi Scoizzato, our former president and still a member of the council, launched a call to rally as many worker as possible in Primolano to restore the central spherical pivot and the 4 wheels that have been removed to work on their bearings. Our turntable is one of those that Mr. Robin Whitlock calls 'balance' type turntable in his article "Surviving ateam age turntables published on July 2017 issue #173 of "Railways illustrated": a central, spherical pivot holds most of the weight of the bridge (that in our turntable hangs to the pivot) and the locomotive while 4 wheels, running on a circular rail, do the rest of the work.

As you can see from the pictures, the sun shone in the sky, maybe more than the workers could have liked:

Ten men worked on the turntable while the usual "cuciniere" cooked the meal.

Here are some pictures of the works:


Preparing to lift the wheel and its axle

Mounting the new bearings

Another picture of the working on the bearings

The first wheel has been mounted.

All four wheels should have been mounted last saturday, three were in place when I left.

BTW, neither the "cuciniere" work. The team almost annihilated two kilograms of pasta, cooked in two rounds (first Matriciana, then Arrabbiata). With the equipment in the picture...



Sunday, no time to rest. A day was planned in the "Museo Veneto del Giocattolo", Padua, to bring our model trains and let the children play. But... The usual layout was unavailable (another one is being built, but we have just the wooden modules), the guy with the Vintage Lego had a relative severely sick, so we were forced to press in service whatever we could have mustered. I brought my "emergency" C-pattern Trix tracks, fast to deploy and remove, reliable, but had almost no straight track.

The resulting layout was named "Maldauto, Maldimare & Santa Nausea (Car-sickness, Sea Sickness and St. Nausea) due the crazed sequence of curves and counter-curves.

Luckily the schools are over and last Sunday was the first sunny Sunday in months, so Padua was a desert and we had no problems letting children play as they wished. Next week, Open Day in "Cabina A" Signal Box.

 

I apologize for the errors in the previous post. The attached pictures not in the text are picture of the wotk on the central spherical pivot.

 

We have some more news from Primolano: the turntable wheels are all set, and we added another "gadget" to the 880.001. I think that the pictures will be worth more than thousand words:




View attachment 44704
Today we did a special opening of "Cabina A" Signal box. Maybe it was too hot, we had not again a large crowd, but all visitors were pleased. We would like to share a clip with the local panorama...

 

First of all, SVF salutes the (future) new member Francesco, son of Paolo and Alessia (both SVF members), born on Friday Jun 21st!

Back to SVF operations. We finally had an open day with bright sun and a good attendance:



But I would like to focus your attention on the freight van on the right, the 1906, behind the pavillon. Don't you thing its position is a bit awkward when you consider our track lanes?
The pavillon was some yards from the turntable and the track passing the turntable should go in another direction...
You can check this with the following pictures. This is our site on Google Maps, in the picture it still appears was our site in 2015, before the restoration :



And this is a more recent image:



And this picture was taken after we started to work on the turntable. I think you already guessed what's the secret behind the position of the van.
Right! The mechanical part of the restoration is completed:



As you can see from the video, the turntable moves with minimal effort. I think that my mates really did a good job!

About good jobs! This is the a link to a Facebook post from one year ago, yesterday: https://www.facebook.com/SVFSocieta...360970767879/1985075004896464/?type=3&theater. Please note a "red skeleton" nearby the steam engine, it is our Sogliola frame when it still stripped by all parts except the motor.

And now a panoramic view of Primolano, this shot is from our junior fellow Luca, who lives in the plateau above Primolano. Guess why his nickname is "Sentinel"

 

A few days ago (Sunday 14th) we had July Open Door events. Despite the lack of "great" news on the railway site (except that most of the turntable has been primed).



The weather was sunny and we had a good attendance and our first experiment of a modeling fair was successful, even if the space was limited, and all traders and associations involved are looking for the next edition. A few pictures from the event, a large scale model (this one is 7 inch gauge):


and the attendance:



As you can see the space was not this large, these were school classrooms after all. But the attendance is good, or at least is well crammed together. As usual we did not forget the younger ones:






This is a good news since our effort is to use our preserved railway to help tourism in the valley (or said in a more pragmatic way, or we succeed creating a working cooperation among all those interested in the growth of the place or we can forget to be successful). By the way, this is part of the permanent exibit of the members of the association working to preserve "Forte della Tagliata" (Fort of the Cut), the fortress that up to WWI barred the way toward Feltre and Cadore:



Artillery shells, grenades. Fascinating and terrible, but the village found itself on the line of battles a few times in the previous two centuries...

As you may have noticed, the fair was not hosted in our shed but took place in the former village junior schools building, a few minutes walking from out shed as you can see from the map below.


This gave us the opportunity fo get some ununsual shots of our shed:




And to show you how many volunteers worked for that day, the tomato sauce for our pasta

 

Paint it black!

 

Looking good, a big pat on the back to all who helped.
Any plans to lay a track for the 7 1/4" loco? At Varallo we have talked about it but other activities need to be completed first. I am building a petrol engined loco for when we are ready.
If you do lay a 7 1/4" line it will be another reason to visit! I must visit one day.

 

We have now a Model sub-group, but at this time we focus on creating an (H|O)O track whose goal is to have something to make many child play at exibits and dedicated events. We noticed that a layout designed with fine modeling could not handle the mass of requests. This layout has obviously the dark objective to grab them till they are young... Really, it is a goodwil example we use to introduce our activities.

About the 7 1/4" gauge line... Many people talk about it, and indeed many think that is a worthwhile add on to the museum, possibly acting as an actual tramway between the shed and the station (where memorabilia will be exposed).

And those are dreams: as in Varallo, we too have activities that need to be completed first, ant this include completing the turntable (it sill lack the walkways), activating 880.001 -that is finding the money to pay the boiler certification -, the remaining parts for the completion of the yard, completing the museum - and this includes a great increase of the cooperation with the local communities - recovering the last rolling stock items (another Corbellini and a tank wagon), preparing the picnic area, starting the touristic service, a scheduled service in the valley much similar to those in British preserved railways with stop at each station and bike transport, but unlike most of British heritage railways, we have to run on an active branchline, with all the attached issues - professional driver and guard, not interfering with the existing traffic...

So the 7 1/4" line remains among the dreams. But you know, here "dreams are made of steel".

 

On Istagram: A clip from when the Sogliola restoration was not jet completed, sort of re-enanctment of WWII services on the Tobruk Railways.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqiRTwXg3Sf/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

After all, as far as I know, only our and the Sogliola engines on the Tobruk line did line services

 

(I admit that in my personal opinion, there is no railway without signaling, except for shuttle services of a single train on a single track. I am really fascinated by the algorithmic choreography of the train circulation)

Today, some of our youngest members, the well know Riccardo, that fought so valiantly to restore the Sogliola, and Nicolò, a young chap fascinated by signaling, signaling devices and other electromechanical marvels, went to the former Padova Station "A Signalbox", a signalbox that up to November 2007 controlled the western border of Padova railway station, managing the traffic generated by two three main lines, a locomotive depot and a coach shed.

Working on documentation provided by Nicolò, they prepared drawing and documentation that will be essential to reactivate at least some of the almost sixty levers, in order to fully show to our vistitors how the SASIB brand interlocking device was operated to control the train traffic.

Here are some pictures:


Nicolò inspects a component frame to asset what devices are there and, possibly, their status. Each electric component is encased in a protective box to both protect the device and ease wiring and maintenance: each component can be easily fixed to the frame by means of bolts and the wiring is done by screwing a crimped wire to an easily accessible terminator.


More components on a frame being assessed and cataloged. On the right of the picture one of the two recovered FS-Pattern block devices, both a telegraph and a signaling device, with the left lever used to send a request for the permission to open a signal for a section and the other to grant the permission upon receiving a request from the other end of the section. In the followin clip, a younger Riccardo shows a full sequence with permission request, permission grant and then resetting of the devices once the train has left the section (the train movement is simulated by operating the button switches).





Riccardo preparing the electric circuit scheme drawing.




Completing the documentation. Nicolò operates an Olivetti Lettera 32 he restored by himself. Very appropriate for the work. (If you think that his typewriter is cool, you should see the Olivetti Divisumma he is working on...)

 

Some more pictures:


Restoring the component label



Surprise surprise! An undocumented rack of components. Former undocumented rack of components now.

 

It's been a long time since I wrote the last post about SVF activities.

We had two open days in September, the second an extra Open Day to compensate for the bad result of the first one (due stormy weather), a session of training of the volunteers (shunting and coupling procedures). During the second Open Day our volunteers got fun vanishing some graffitti from DE424



One of the old graffiti is gone (with others!).

On October 6th we had a lot of visitors to our second "Cabina A" open days. A couple of well advertised small layout kept the younger visitor very busy while the parents learnt about the purpose and working of the signal box.



The good result of the "let the children play" formula suggest that we will have more openings of our signal box. Signal box that has been thoroughly by our young-but-competent team, and this is another step forward the reactivation of at leas part of the levers.



And finally, on October 13th, our last Open Day in Primolano. This one was really busy. The open day was part of a larger happening in the village, with volunteers trained by Fondo Ambiente Italiano that took the visitors around the village before leaving them to our volunteers that lead them in a tour around our site, explaining carefully every detail. We had the larges attendance ever, thanks to Fondo Ambiente Italiano, but we hold perfectly and I was really proud hearing the visitors congratulating with one of one younger and promising members, Luca "The Sentinel", nickname he received because, since he lives in Arsié, another village on the plains above Primolano, constantly monitors what happens in the station.



Above, various group ov visitors moving around. Please note: the double point is the only one left of that pattern (Südbahn, end of the 19th century) and is in operation under a special, museum specific, permission. Below: visitors hear about our carriage and the shed story.




But the bes thing happened on Saturday, October 12th 2019.

Engine 880.001 is the first Italian steam locomotive certified with the CE0036!
​

Il processo per la certificazione ha avuto inizio nella primavera 2018 ed è durato complessivamente un anno e mezzo.
This is the official press release:

We also tested AB coach lights!

and the members had their improvised party!


And now, gentlemen, while we wait and work for something we dream since 2006... Let's celebrate, with many thanks to Pit Master Paolo for his cousine!