Officine di Pietrarsa

In 1842, therefore only two years after the decree had been issued, the first building and ancillary rooms had already been completed, where about 200 workers worked among turners, adjusters, forgers and carpenters under the direction of the Captain of the Artillery, Don Luigi Corsi and other army officers who assisted him.

It is no coincidence that the Captain Corsi was chosen as director; he was already known to Ferdinand II for his invention of the famous "incendiary balls", a sort of shells that were inextinguishable in the water and for this reason they are very efficient in dripping down the enemy ship.

The goal was to free himself from foreign dependence on the production of the equipment required for the extension of the Ionian and Adriatic lines, started on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The plant had several important visitors including that of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, who expressed his intention to use Pietrarsa as a model for the Kronstadt railway complex.

In 1861 the Minister of the Navy Luigi Federico Menabrea established a Commissione delle ferriere (Commission of the ironworks) whose minute investigation analyzed the status of all the relevant industrial activities located on the territory of the Kingdom.

The report showed that the costs of production of the locomotives of the two most important plants of the time (Sampierdarena and Pietrarsa) were more or less equivalent or slightly higher than those of the foreign industry.

The costs at Ansaldo and Pietrarsa were shown to be substantially equivalent but the pre-eminence of these companies ended with the Bourbon regime and its protectionist policies.

A report by the engineer Grandis, commissioned by the Savoy government, negatively portrayed the activity and profitability of the plant, even advising its sale or demolition.

On 10 January 1863, the Pietrarsa plant with its contents was leased, for 30 years in the sum of 45,000 lira by the Minister of Finance of the Minghetti government to a company established by Iacopo Bozza.

From 1863, Pietrarsa incorporated l'Officina dei Granili, producing metal structural works, railway carriages and mechanical parts.

However, after 1888, orders for the construction of locomotives were directed to foreign factories or to northern Italy and Pietrarsa was downgraded to a maintenance and repair plant.

New railway traction systems (electric and diesel) gradually displaced steam and led to the slow but inexorable decline of the plant until a closure order was issued on 15 November 1975.

After a long period of neglect, the decision was made to transform Pietrarsa into a railway museum, housing it in the same environment that had been the oldest Italian locomotive factory.