Freight Trains and Territory: Trade and Local Development (1865–1915)

Railways were originally conceived to transport goods, moving heavy loads of raw materials from mines and distributing industrial products. For a long time, socalled “mixed trains”, carrying both freight and passengers, circulated widely. Freight yards were generally adjacent to passenger stations and were extensively distributed across the territory: large hubs, such as Milan Sempione, were mirrored at the local level by a dense network of smaller facilities, around which the socalled railway towns were often born. Above all, freight traffic fostered a significant expansion of product exchange and thus of national and international trade, not only by rail but also through local tramway systems. This article analyses the growth of freight services by addressing a largely neglected topic in historiography: the categories of goods transported by rail, which were highly differentiated and ranged from parcels to live animals. The study focuses on Italy and is based primarily on annual reports on railways and tramways. The period under examination spans from 1885, when railway management was reorganised into three major networks, to 1915, when transport systems were increasingly oriented towards wartime needs.

Keywords: Railway Freight, Local Development, Trade Networks, Italy, Transport History.

Stefano Maggi, I treni merci e il territorio: commercio e sviluppo locale (1865-1915) in "STORIA URBANA " 183/2026, pp 57-77, DOI: 10.3280/SU2026-183004