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Stranded in San Marino

by hidden europe

Picture above: The train to nowhere: all that is left of the San Marino railway (photo © hidden europe).

Summary

San Marino may no longer have a passenger railway. It does however still have a train, thus marking out San Marino as one of two countries in Europe that have a train but no railway. The surviving train in San Marino is a graceful addition to the landscape of the mountainous republic in the Apennines. It is perched on an old railway bridge.

In the spring of 1923, the American poet and critic Ezra Pound was holed up in Rimini. The library in which he wanted to work was closed — “the damn custode has flu” he wrote to his wife Dorothy. In that same letter, Pound told Dorothy of his plans to explore the local area a little and to take the train up to San Marino.

Pound was in fact a little prescient in his plans, for although the idea of a railway from Rimini to San Marino had been around for many years, the line was not in fact opened until 1932.

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