During the Spring Cultural Open Days of FAI, Isabelle and Erik visited Il Museo Didattico della Vaporiera (the museum of the steam engine) in the paper town of Fabriano.
It is from 1866 that the steam trains on the line Falconara-Foligno (Umbria) started to be used and were usually leaving from Fabriano station. This line has always been one of the most important on our region, and we had to wait several years before the Pope gave the consent to build it. At the time, Le Marche was indeed under papal rule and, first the then Pope Gregory XVI refused to build it, and then thanks to his successor Pope Pius IX, born in Senigallia, we finally got it built. The lines multiplied: Fabriano-Urbino and Fabriano-Civitanova Marche.
In 1944, during the war, the station was damaged and a new station was built a little further on. From then on, the old station and the outbuildings served as a storage and repair place for the trains.
On May 11, 2019, a little part of the storage was converted to a museum. There is a future plan in which old steam locomotives and other old trains will be exhibited. This is how they want to tell future generations the history of the Italian railways.
Today, many different objects related to the Italian Railways are displayed here, which have been collected over the years. The chairman Giancarlo Bonafoni of the retired railway employees the DLF (Dopo Lavoro Ferroviaria), also occasionally shared some of his own work experiences during the tour.
All kinds of signaling equipment, which were still in Montecarotto station until 2018, welcomed the visitors.
The room with an overview of communication material turned out to be very interesting. Nowadays a lot is done centrally and automatically, in the past the station master often had to be notified by telephone or even via the telegraph in Morse code when a train was passing.
So we saw the whole evolution in a nutshell: from telegraph to telex to fax and computer.
They themselves had the first laptop:
The old telephones were also present!
One of the young guides explained to us that the dial telephone was a very old device, where you had to turn the dial to call someone. We as listeners had a hearty laugh, after all we had all used such a device before! (but to this youngster that probably seemed like prehistory)
The Italian Railways also employed its own doctor.
In winter, the sation chef heated himself on a wood/coal stove:
We saw numerous objects that once belonged to Commissioner Montalbano. As a passionate collector of everything related to railways, his collection was given a beautiful place in this museum. It was not about the imaginary well-known Commissioner Montalbano, invented by the writer Andrea Cammilleri, but Baldassarre Montalbano, called Baldo, born in 1930 in Sciacca (Sicily). For many years he held the commissioner post in Fabriano. He died in 1993.
Such a journey back in time turned out to be very instructive.
Hopefully they will realize the entire museum and it will not, as so often, remain covered in dust somewhere in the chest of drawers.
Anyone who would like to retrieve nostalgic memories of trains can always visit it, provided that they call or email:
Tel. 0039-0732 24256
GSM: 0039- 347 7792828
e-mail dlffabriano@dlf.it
The Museum’s address: Viale Serafini 84b 60044 Fabriano (AN) en Facebookpage
Would you like to experience a nostalgic ride Fabriano-Pergola in an old train ? You can find more information about this in our article about this trip.
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