Commentary

Giuseppe De Cicco, Capo Stazione

Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief
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Restored Littorina diesel railcar at Stazione Cansano. Italy, 2017. Wikidata photo/Giorgio Stagni

FROM THE EDITOR, RAILWAY AGE SEPTEMBER 2022 ISSUE: By now, many of you may have realized that I’m of Italian origin. My last name, thanks to my paternal grandfather William (1891-1972), an Italian immigrant from Campobasso who served in World War I in the U.S. Army, is a shortened version of “Iacovantuono.” There’s actually a village of Iacovantuono in the Municipality of Spinete, in the Province of Campobasso, in the Molise Region. My middle name, Carmine, is after my maternal grandfather, Carmine Vaccaro (1903-1970), who I called Nonno.

His wife, my Nonna, was Rosa Russo (1904-2004). It is from the Russo and Vaccaro families that I trace my railway heritage. I may have had my first exposure to rail growing up in Newark, N.J., when my dad took me on Newark City Subway (today’s NJ Transit Newark Light Rail) rides on PCC cars from Branch Brook Park to Penn Station Newark, but my roots go back much further, to Italy. You could say that railroading is in my blood—literally!

Rosa’s father Giuseppe Russo (1873-1924), my great-grandfather, built and operated the first electric transmission system in the small town of Nola, near Napoli. In the early 1920s, he wanted to build a streetcar line that would connect with the main station in Nola on what is still called the Circumvesuviana, the five-line narrow-gauge (950mm) commuter rail system (map, below, the line in yellow) connecting Napoli with the communities surrounding Mt. Vesuvius. He was recruiting investors when, in 1924, at age 51, he died of influenza. The line was never built.

My mom and her sisters recall that one of their favorite things to do was riding Littorina diesel railcars on Italy’s regional main lines. Built by Fiat beginning in 1932 under orders from Benito Mussolini, some 800 examples plied Italian rails for many years. That’s where my great-granduncle Giuseppe De Cicco, whose sister Giovina married Pietro Vaccaro, my great-grandfather, comes in.

Guiseppe De Cicco was the Capo Stazione (stationmaster) at the main railway depot in Conegliano Veneto, Treviso Province, Veneto (Venice) Region. He lived with his family at the station in a house provided by the railway. In those days, when railway stations all over the world anchored central business districts in cities and towns large and small, Giuseppe earned a good living and provided for his family. He’d frequently visit his relatives in Amorosi, traveling, of course, on a Littorina.

Recalling my Italian railway heritage prompted a response from Joseph Toth Jr., a former U.S. railroader who has resided in Germany since 1976, working for the Deutsche Bundesbahn (today’s DB Rail). Here’s his story:

“I began an overseas pen-pal relationship in 1969 with Fernando, an Italian railfan, who lived in Rome. His father had been the stationmaster for FS Italia in the small village of Poggio Mirteto where Fernando was born and raised. This made Fernando a confirmed railfan for the rest of his life. After I joined my wife here in Germany in late 1976, I continued to correspond with Fernando and even visited him in his Rome apartment on an employee pass, as I was employed with Deutsche Bundesbahn at the time. I had left my native Texas behind with fond memories having been employed with Cotton Belt (1967-68) and Santa Fe (1968-1976) in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area as a switchman/brakeman, promoted to engine foreman/conductor. With DB, I was employed in the huge Nuremberg hump yard (below) as a switchman/brakeman. The hump yard, by the way, had been imported from the U.S. and was a carbon copy of the Southern Pacific’s Texas & New Orleans hump yard in Houston!

DB Rail Nuremberg yard

“Fernando was employed in Rome with a major tobacco company and was in management. He had a narrow room in his apartment where he had an HO scale layout. He operated trains based on U.S. prototypes including a Märklin Santa Fe freight train headed by their Warbonnet F7s. I spent an enjoyable week with Fernando in Rome and his parent’s house in Poggio Mirtato in the country some 55 km north of the Eternal City, which Rome was and continues to be known by today. We spent one morning riding the streetcars that circled Rome and visited his favorite hobby shop as well. His wife had sadly passed away when I made the trip to visit, but he had a housekeeper who turned out traditional Italian dishes, which added a few un-needed pounds on me!

“My late father was born in Chicago in 1917 of parents who had immigrated from Hungary. My grandmother never learned to speak fluent English. When my father was a toddler, the family moved from the Windy City to a farm outside of Knox, Indiana. Big city life wasn’t for his parents. My mother met my father in the officer’s club while he was stationed at Love Field in Dallas during WWII. I was born in Dallas on July 4, 1946. He was a First Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. But not wanting a family, he left Dallas for duty at an airfield in Montana. He remained my mother’s big love, and they did continue to write to each other. Shortly before I turned four, we boarded a Santa Fe train that took us to Chicago. He picked us up from the station, and we stayed with him and his parents on the Indiana farm. After the visit, we boarded another train destined to New York City to visit my mother’s half sister and her husband, who was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, stationed on Staten Island. These train trips made a lifelong railfan out of me.

“Now age 76, I remain a devoted fan of the Katy (Missouri-Kansas-Texas, now part of Union Pacific). I was raised on my grandparents’ mini-farm 12 miles north of Dallas just off old Highway 77 (now I-35E) in Farmers Branch, Tex., where the Katy’s Dallas to Denton branch ran just east of their place. The Frisco also ran behind their place and interestingly both the M-K-T and Frisco crossed the Cotton Belt at grade a couple of miles north at Carrollton. With so many rail lines that we have lost in the U.S., Carrollton still sees all three lines operating as survivors, albeit no longer operated by their original railroads. Until relocated in the 1980s, the Frisco and Cotton Belt diamond was located smack dab in the middle of Denton Road.

“I still connect with two Texas railroad buddies. Steele Craver lives in Arlington not far from the former Texas & Pacific main line. David Wiegand, although born in Fort Worth, has lived in Albuquerque, N.Mex., since childhood. He still returns to Texas with his wife from Brazil to visit relatives and railfan ‘Cowtown’ as Fort Worth is known.

“Steele worked on the narrow-gauge line that rebuilt the Georgetown Loop in Colorado, then went to work for Six Flags Over Texas, which included a narrow gauge park railroad. David worked for Santa Fe and Amtrak in both engine service and on the ground as switchman/brakeman, later promoted engine foreman/conductor. He is currently president of the Railway Evangelistic Association and has a modest (due to space limitations) HO scale layout. The REA publishes All Aboard magazine. Editor and former Burlington Northern m/w employee Joe Spooner published my biography in the Summer 2015 issue, which, like many back issues, can be read online.

“Your editorship at Railway Age reminds me of the late Freeman Hubbard, longtime editor of the classic publication, Railroad Magazine. Like you, his added personal touch really made Railroad Magazine what it was. You combine both business as well as the human touch to Railway Age, which makes it unique in today’s world of railroad related publications, as Hubbard did when he was at the throttle, working out of his New York City office.”

I’ve known for a long time that the railroad industry is very much like a family. Sure, we have more than our share of internal conflicts, and occasionally, an unwelcome “outsider” comes along with only self-interest in mind. Overall, in my time at Railway Age (July 1, 2022 marked 30 years), I’ve felt blessed to have been associated with many wonderful people. Some have become close friends, all have been (or still are) colleagues. As always, my hope is that you find what we publish buona lettura (good reading).

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