Empoli–Siena–Chiusi railway

The works, begun in 1846, were completed in a few years and the first Empoli–Siena section (64 km) was opened on 14 October 1849,[3] although at the time of the inauguration, Montearioso tunnel, which lies a few hundred metres from Siena station, was still under construction.

This tunnel, which was a significant technical achievement at the time, is 1516 metres long and for some years it was the longest tunnel in Italy. It was dug with great difficulty in friable and moist soils and took four years and three months of work, delaying the opening of Siena station to 18 September 1850. For a year, the terminal station of the line was located in a temporary building at the northern entrance of the tunnel.

In 1851, the company obtained a concession for the extension of the line along the Chiana Valley[4] and started designing the section from Siena to Chiusi. The first stone was laid on 20 May 1854: the Siena–Sinalunga section (58 km) was inaugurated five years later, on 11 September 1859, and operations commenced on 19 September.[5] The Sinalunga–Torrita di Siena section (7 km) was opened on 29 October 1860.[3]

In August 1861, the company obtained an authorisation from the Italian government to continue the Siena–Chiusi line towards Orvieto to connect with the Roma–Foligno line near Orte.[6] The Torrita di Siena–Salarco section (6 km) was opened on 20 October 1861.[3] Salarco station was located near a stream of the same name in the locality of Sciarti, in Abbadia di Montepulciano. An iron bridge with two spans was built to cross the stream—hence the locality is called Ponte di Ferro (iron bridge)—near a monumental brick waterfall (La Serra) built by the engineer Alessandro Manetti in 1849, during land reclamation work in the area. The characteristic nineteenth-century bridge was destroyed during the Second World War, by retreating German troops on 30 June 1944.[7]

It was decided to build a railway yard in the middle of the Val di Chiana to convey the agricultural production of the three most important farms of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the area: Abbadia di Montepulciano, Chianacce and Acquaviva di Montepulciano. Salarco–Chiusi section (20 km) was opened on 24 July 1862, while the Chiusi–Ficulle section was opened on 15 December of the same year.[3] Torrita di Siena, Sciarti and Acquaviva di Montepulciano stations were opened in the meantime.

The announcement of the inauguration of the last stations on the Salarco–Chiusi section appeared in the Bollettino delle Strade Ferrate and in the newspaper Il Monitore Toscano, in which a note from the concessionaire company was published announcing the opening of the line from Salarco to Chiusi on 24 July 1862, while Acquaviva di Montepulciano and Ficulle stations would have been opened at a later time. A pair of trains, departing from Chiusi at 6:00 am and from Siena at 5:20 pm, was used for freight transport and covered the distance between the two stations in just under three hours.

Under law no. 2272 of 14 May 1865, which reorganised the railway networks in Italy, the concessionary company of the Central Tuscany railway was incorporated into the Società per le strade ferrate romane (Roman Railways), which took over the management of the line and took over the completion of the line to Orte, as well as the construction of a branch from Asciano to Grosseto, completed in 1872. On 24 August 1867, Giuseppe Garibaldi travelled on the line on the last afternoon train and, coming from Rapolano Terme, he stopped at Salarco station, where some police notables were waiting for him and accompanied him by carriage to Montepulciano.[nb 1]

For some years the railway was of considerable importance as it was the only railway link between Rome and Northern Italy. However, starting from the mid-1870s, with the construction of the Livorno–Rome railway and the Florence–Rome railway, the Tuscan Central railway lost importance and was relegated to a more local role. The line followed the vicissitudes of the Roman Railways Company and, with the nationalisation of the company, it was taken over by the Italian State in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Another branch of the Central Tuscany railway that connected Poggibonsi to Colle di Val d'Elsa was opened in 1885. It was initially planned that this branch would continue until it reached Volterra and be connected to the Cecina–Volterra railway, but this project never proceeded.

The need to speed up the connections between Florence and Rome and to connect the Central Tuscany railway with the Umbrian–Aretina railway, which connected Arezzo to Terni via Perugia began to be considered in the 1870s. To go from the old to the new capital of the Kingdom of Italy, it was necessary to take a very long route via Bucine, Arezzo, Tuoro sul Trasimeno, Perugia, Foligno and Orte. Eleven projects were presented for the new railway line: the first of these involved branching off the Central Tuscany railway at Salarco, crossing the entire Val di Chiana diagonally from south-west to north-east and reaching the Umbrian–Aretina railway near Bastardo, one of the thirteen farms of the former Grand Duchy in the valley, located 7 km north of Arezzo.

Other proposals considered included the following routes: Chiusi–Terontola, Salarco–Castiglion Fiorentino, Salarco–Olmo, Acquaviva di Montepulciano–Cortona, Salarco–Bucine (36.10 km long with an estimated cost of lire 3,200,000) and Buoninsegna–Bucine (which would have branched off the Central Tuscan railway at Rapolano Terme). In August 1871, the Acquaviva di Montepulciano–Cortona project was surveyed: the new railway line would have been built over a distance of 20 km through the Chiuso and Selva valleys, with the construction of two tunnels (Apparita and Barullo) and a total cost of lire 2,250,000.

In the end, the Chiusi–Terontola project was selected: the cost of a line that would connect Chiusi with Terontola was estimated at around 2,000,000 lire. In the spring of 1874, the first excavation works began, despite the opposition voiced by the districts that would have benefitted from the rejected projects.

With the nationalisation of the railways, the management of the line passed to Ferrovie dello Stato in 1905. It completed the new Siena–Grosseto railway in 1927. This branches off from the main railway south of Siena station and crosses Tuscany to the south and joins the Asciano–Grosseto railway at Monte Antico station. The Arezzo–Sinalunga railway, which branched off the Central Tuscany railway north of Sinalunga and reached the city of Arezzo crossing the Val di Chiana for 40 km, was completed three years later, in 1930.

A second track was completed on the section from Granaiolo to Castelfiorentino, including the new Cambiano station in 1990.[8] The section from Castelfiorentino to Certaldo was completed a few years later. In autumn 2004, work began on doubling the section from Certaldo to Poggibonsi,[9] which was completed on 20 June 2006;[10] during this phase some level crossings were also eliminated and the track layout was rationalised.

On 24 October 2018, the Transport Committee of the Chamber of Deputies agreed to the expenditure of €177 million to carry out a substantial renewal of the line: work to double the Empoli–Granaiolo section would start by 2021, while the line would be electrified from Empoli to Siena.

On 25 November 1935, the current Siena station was inaugurated, located on a new route from the southern exit of the Montearioso tunnel that followed a route that is down hill from the city and north of it, compared to the old route. The opening took place at midnight on the previous 28 October, a symbolic date for the Fascist regime as the anniversary of the March on Rome; at the same time, both the old station and the old section of the Empoli–Siena line were closed.

The new station was designed by the architect Angiolo Mazzoni, who had already built a large series of public buildings in the 1920s and 1930s. The passenger building, externally finished in brick and travertine, has architectural features typical of Italian Rationalism. The old station of Siena was located closer to the city walls and at a higher altitude: it was in fact located at 312.70 m above sea level, at chainage 256.457 km.[nb 2] The passenger building is now partly used as a private residence and partly as a barracks for the State Forestry Corps.

The passenger building of Salarco station still exists and is totally abandoned. It can be seen on the Lauretana provincial road near where it passes of the current line, near the junction to Sciarti, in Abbadia di Montepulciano.

• Angiolini, Alessandro (2007). La Casa del Popolo e la Casa del Fascio ad Abbadia di Montepulciano (in Italian). I libri di Polis.
• Angiolini, Alessandro (March 2008). "I treni di una volta. Le vecchie stazioni ferroviarie poliziane: Montepulciano, Gracciano, Fontago, Abbadia e Acquaviva". Cara Montepulciano (in Italian).
• Lazzeri, Luigi (1862). Siena e il suo territorio (in Italian). Siena: Istituto dei Sordo-Muti.
• RFI, ed. (December 2003). Fascicolo Linea 98 (in Italian). Rete Ferroviaria Italiana.
• Tuzza, Alessandro, ed. (1927). "Prospetto cronologico dei tratti di ferrovia aperti all'esercizio dal 1839 al 31 dicembre 1926" (in Italian). Ufficio Centrale di Statistica delle Ferrovie dello Stato/Trenidicarta.it. Retrieved 18 August 2018.
• Atlante ferroviario d'Italia e Slovenia [Railway atlas of Italy and Slovenia]. Schweers + Wall. 2010. ISBN 978-3-89494-129-1.