Narrow-gauge railways in Sicily
The primary aim was to be able to convey wines, agricultural products and fish from the ports of the Mediterranean to the regional capital, Palermo.
The extension towards Castelvetrano and the south coast was entrusted in concession to the Società Siciliana per le Ferrovie Economiche (Sicilian Economical Railway Company) on 11 December 1898; however the Corleone-San Carlo was inaugurated only on 21 May 1903.
Traffic remained at good levels for the first section up to Corleone but was always limited on the second and this led to a period of provisional management by the State in 1906 and then the incorporation into the FS network as of 1922.
While the construction of the main standard gauge network continued steadily, the construction of the other secondary lines suffered long setbacks with the exception of the private Circumetnea Railway, built by the Società Siciliana per lavori pubblici, (the Sicilian Civil Engineering Company, of which Trewhella himself was a shareholder), opened between 1895 and 1898.
The result was a mess of very slow and tortuous lines, subject to landslides, the absence of efficient signaling and operating systems, and above all no relation to any master plan.
The other line that from Castelvetrano pointed towards Santa Ninfa, crossing various municipalities of the Belice Valley, then bending towards San Carlo and connecting to the line coming from Palermo (completing the north–south narrow-gauge transversal), after departure of the works of the first section proceeded more and more slowly and saw its completion only in 1931 and in 1935 it was enriched by the branch diverted to Santa Ninfa-Salemi, which in the initial intentions should have continued directly on Trapani, but after the design and construction of the Alcamo Dir.-Trapani via Milo, was then diverted to Calatafimi (construction that stopped after the construction of the headquarters and buildings).
The first km in operation served the sulfur basins of Floristella, Grottacalda and Assoro-Leonforte with two lines: Dittaino-Piazza Armerina-Caltagirone and Dittaino-Leonforte.
The first 13.856 km (8.610 mi) long section started from the courtyard of the Dittaiono station (formerly Assoro), and entered operation on April 25, 1912.
The second section of the line of 7.539 km (4.685 mi) came into operation on 29 August 1914 and connected Valguarnera to the Grottacalda station built near the Floristella-Grottacalda mining complex, equipped with Decauville junctions and railways, in which thousands of workers worked for the extraction and sulfur processing.
The town of Piazza Armerina was only reached on September 7, 1920, demonstrating the priority given to freight services over passenger traffic.
Caltagirone was reached only in 1930 and, moreover, the construction was done so cheaply that the line was beset with subsidence and landslides which often interrupted traffic and caused derailments.
The remaining section of the Dittaino-Leonforte towards Nicosia was partly built but the track was never laid; the branch Junction Paternò-Regalbuto-Paternò-Motta Sant'Anastasia dragged itself between postponements and reworkings.
Finally only in the southern part was built to standard gauge, like Regalbuto-Catania and opened entirely much later, in 1952 without any connection to ensure it even minimal passenger traffic from Leonforte and Agira.
The friezes that indicate the year VIII of the Fascist era on the bridges before the Camporeale station bear witness to the successful execution of the project.
Some closure made sense since the industrial purpose for which they were created had ceased to exist, for others such as Dittaino-Piazza Armerina-Caltagirone, Castelvetrano-Salaparuta and Castelvetrano-Agrigento it was a questionable measure given that the existing commuter traffic remained at good levels and was forcibly diverted due to the lack of speeding up of services and lines, sometimes impossible timetables and very long interruptions for relatively simple jobs.
[5] Construction, now under the control of the Ministry of Public Works, after the suspension during World War II, resumed very slowly at the beginning of the 1950s, when FS also made the only concrete attempt to relaunch some lines with the introduction of the RALn60 diesel railcar, a vehicle specifically built for Sicily.
[7] In the fifties, in spite of the railcars' success in their limited operations, the politicians then in power decided that road transport was the future and closed sections even with good levels of ridership.
In this case the train had to stop at the pole and wait to be called with hand signals in order to enter the station.
