I'm working on a long post about the "Long Modernization" of the Italian railways since nationalization, so I put up a map that tracks all the major improvements in the alignment (double- and quad-tracking, bypasses, fast quad-tracking, etc.)of trunk routes since 1905, the year of nationalization.
Comments
Interesting detail is that the Italy seems to have had consistent closing of gangrenous lines throughout the Postwar period compared to British (Beeching) or Japanese (1987 privatisation) big bang cuts.
I mean Japan rural interurban died off in the 1950's and 1960's but the rail tribe plus unions prevented until the 1980's (they kept building new rural duds till then).
https://shop.fondazionefs.it/the-italian-railways-1839-2019.html
What got you on this?
I'm Italian too, have lived in Italy and had the"pleasure"of riding some of the trains... Some, not so great. Mamma Mia!
The segments opened in 1986 and 1992 are designed to 300 km/h in terms of geometry.
So while SNCF gets credit for opening the first high speed line in Europe, Italy gets *nothing* for the Direttissima.