Thomas Cook & Son’s Vesuvius...

10 Japan Railway & Transport Review • March 1998

Railways and Tourism

Features

Copyright © 1998 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

Thomas Cook & Son’s Vesuvius Railway

Paul Smith

In The Business of Travel, a book pub-lished in 1891 to mark Thomas Cook &Son’s Golden Jubilee, W. Fraser Raewrote that there were 580,397 km of rail-ways in the world, of which ThomasCook could issue tickets for 555,030.However, when it came to owning rail-ways, the picture was rather different.The length of line owned by the firm in1891 was less than 1 km—the funicularup Mt. Vesuvius in Italy. By 1903, 8 morekilometers had been added, and the to-tal remained unchanged until December1945, when it dropped to zero. This ar-ticle, which is based on primary sourcematerials from the Thomas Cook Ar-chives, as well as a number of previously-published accounts, attempts to trace thedevelopment of Cook’s Vesuvius Railway.Mt. Vesuvius (Monte Vesuvio) is an ac-tive volcano rising above the Bay ofNaples on the plain of Campania insouthern Italy. The present height of thecone is 1289 m, but it changes consider-ably after each major eruption. Therehave been many eruptions in recordedhistory, the last significant one being in1944. Scientific study of the volcanobegan in the late 18th century, but it wasnot until 1844 that an observatory wasbuilt, near Eremo, to keep watch andwarn of impending trouble. Despite therisk and fatigue associated with climb-ing the volcano, the ascent was popularwith tourists. Their main complaint wasthe greed of the local guides whose ser-vices, horses and sedan-chairs had to beused for the final ascent.During the 1870s, a Hungarian tramwaypromoter named Ernesto EmmanueleOblieght commissioned an engineeringstudy on a possible funicular railway onthe final steep ascent to the summit. TheBanco di Roma was willing to back him,but he encountered opposition from thelocal community, which he bought off bymeans of an annual payment of £900 (£1= US$5 in the late 19th century) plus atax levied on every passenger. The

£16,000 contract was eventuallyawarded to E. Olivieri of Milan in 1879,but such were the difficulties of the workthat the line was not opened to touristsuntil 6 June 1880. The construction ofthis funicular railway inspired the Nea-politan song ‘Funiculi Funicula’.The first funicular was a double-trackmonorail, described in the January 1892issue of The Tramway and RailwayWorld: ‘The peculiarity of the railway isfound in its single-rail construction,which consists of wooden stringers laidlongitudinally and carrying a single rail,upon which ride the central wheels ofthe car. There are, however, two otherrails placed on either side of the sleepernear its base. These side rails are laid atan angle, and are adapted to wheelswhose axles project from the floor of thecoaches and bear closely against the railson either side of the sleeper, thus keep-ing the carriage firmly upright.’The funicular used two endless cables,driven by a 33-kW steam engine at thelower station and running round pulleysat the top—the line itself was 806-m long,climbed 391 m and the steepest gradientwas 63%. There were two cars, named

Etna and Vesuvio, each of which had soleuse of one track. The cars could carryup to 15 passengers (in addition to theguard) on each trip, and were designedso that the tourists sat comfortably onhorizontal benches throughout their 12-minute ride. On busy days, the funicu-lar could carry up to 300 passengers,each paying 20 shillings (£1) for the jour-ney from Naples to the summit ofVesuvius. However, costs were high (coalfor the winding engine had to be broughtup on horseback) and the concessionpayments absorbed most of the profits.The enterprise was soon in debt, and by1886 seemed likely to close.John Mason Cook, the son of ThomasCook, had first seen (and used) theVesuvius funicular in 1882 with his friendWilliam Bemrose, who recorded: ‘Thetoil of climbing up on the loose ashes isso great, that we decided to avail our-selves of the railway notwithstanding theunpleasant look it had.’ By 1886, JohnMason Cook was organizing tourist par-ties to Italy on a programme that prom-ised an ascent of Vesuvius, and, to keepfaith with his clients, he advanced money(from his own pocket) to keep the funicu-

Vesuvio, one of the original two 1880 funicular cars (Thomas Cook Archives)

11Japan Railway & Transport Review • March 1998Copyright © 1998 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

lar going. In 1887, the original ownersgave up and John Mason Cook boughtthem out, the funicular becoming hispersonal property. He retained the ex-isting manager, Mr Treiber, a Swiss gentle-man, and Thomas Cook & Son becamethe general agent.John Mason Cook refused to continueextortionate payments to the guides’group, whereupon they burned down thestation, cut the track and threw one ofthe cars into the crater. He repaired theline, but it was cut again, and so heclosed down the whole concern for 6months, refusing to reopen it until theguides accepted his terms. Eventuallythey gave in, accepting a fixed fee perpassenger, part of an inclusive fare cov-ering a horse-drawn carriage fromNaples, ascent of the funicular and guideservices at the crater. John Mason Cookextended the road to the base station(charging tolls to non-inclusive passen-gers) and modernized the funicular, in-stalling a new winding engine and newcables ‘in order to ensure perfect safety,comfort and regularity in working’. Heeven ‘enlarged and improved’ the restau-rant at the lower station, placing it underthe management of ‘a responsible repre-sentative’ who was ‘bound to provideeverything of the best quality at reason-able charges’.The renewed funicular opened for busi-ness in May 1889 and Baedeker’s Guideswere soon rewriting their Vesuvius pages,praising the new railway and saying: ‘Thethanks of tourists are . . . due to MessrsCook for the energy with which, in faceof serious difficulties, they maintain or-der and discipline among the guides andothers, who have been accustomed forgenerations to practise extortion upontravellers.’One of the most distinguished passengerson John Mason Cook’s revitalized funicu-lar was the Prince of Naples. An accountof the visit was reported in Cook’s Excur-sionist and Tourist Advertiser : ‘Leaving

the barracks of the Maddalena at 1 p.m.in our four-horse breaks, the Royal partyreached the summit of the mountain atthe Railway Station by 4 p.m. The Princeand party then ascended to within 150yards [c.137 meters] of the Crater, by theFunicular Railway (the property of MrJohn M. Cook), whence they were con-ducted to the edge of the Crater by theGuides. The Prince was very much im-pressed and pleased with this, his firstvisit to Vesuvius, and returning by the Fu-nicular Railway to the Restaurant,deigned to write his name in our registerof Travellers.’ (Unfortunately, this regis-ter is not in the Thomas Cook Archives.)Despite the enthusiasm of the Prince ofNaples, the tourist potential was still lim-ited by the slow, steep and costly ascentby horse-drawn carriage, and by the largenumbers of beggars, musicians and ven-dors who pestered tourists. John MasonCook, by now a rich man, decided in themid-1890s that the best way to developthe Vesuvius business would be to builda railway from Naples to the lower sta-tion of the funicular. He may have beeninspired by the 1894-opening of a rivalaccess by private bridle-path fromBoscotrecase near Pompei, which en-

abled tourists to visit both Pompei andVesuvius in one day.George Noble Fell, engineer of theSnaefell Mountain Railway on the Isle ofMan, was engaged as consulting engineerfor what was to be known as the Naplesand Vesuvius Railway. The plans for thisbold project, which survive in the Tho-mas Cook Archives, reveal that the rail-way was to be of standard 1435-mmgauge, traversing the Naples suburbs byviaduct and including 7.5 km of Abt rack-and-pinion line to climb the mountain.Steam locomotives would be used, anda concession was granted by the Italiangovernment, whom John Mason Cookpaid a substantial deposit, which wouldbe forfeit if the line was not built. Unfor-tunately, the cost estimate was far toohigh, even for John Mason Cook, and thecapital could not be raised.At this point, Mr Strub, an engineer ofthe Swiss Locomotive and MachineWorks (SLM) of Winterthur, and MrMorgenthaler, an engineer of Brown,Boveri & Company of Baden, Switzer-land, contacted John Mason Cook withan alternative suggestion that would cutthe cost by almost 70%. Taking thenewly-opened (1898) Jungfrau Railway

Route of Vesuvius Railway from Pugliano to crater (Thomas Cook Archives)




as an example, they proposed that theline should be worked electrically (thusallowing steeper gradients); that the rackportion, reduced to 1.6 km, should be onthe cheaper Strub system instead of theAbt; that the track gauge should be 1 m;and that the line should start fromPugliano, at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius,which could easily be reached fromNaples by road or by train. The linewould thus be only 7.7 km in length, and

would cost just SFr1.25 million (SFr1000= US$200 in the late 19th century) ratherthan the SFr4 million needed to build theNaples-to-Vesuvius line.John Mason Cook accepted their advice,and detailed plans were deposited withthe Italian government just 1 day beforethe concession was due to expire. Theplans were accepted, and in the early partof 1899 John Mason Cook signed con-tracts with SLM and Brown, Boveri &

Company to build the line. However, hedied within a few months and, in orderto wind up his estate, the Vesuvius Rail-way and the new contracts were takenover by the firm of Thomas Cook & Son.Whether Thomas Cook’s grandsons (whowere then running the firm) were as keenon Vesuvius as their father is doubtful,but contracts had been signed and moneyhad been pledged, so the work wentahead.The new 7.7-km stretch of railway upVesuvius was divided into three sections.The first, which began at the PuglianoTerminus, was an ordinary electric rail-way, with traction obtained by simpleadhesion to the rails. With electric trac-tion, it was possible to climb gradientsof up to 8%, and the track climbed atthis inclination for 4 km through vine-yards and past San Vito to the site of thegenerating station, workshop and carshed. The second section, commencingat the power station, was a Strub rackrailway with a maximum gradient of25%, which was as great as that of theRigi Railway in Switzerland. The carswere pulled up this section by an elec-tric rack locomotive geared to toothedwheels engaging the rack. At Eremo, thesite of the observatory, the railway re-verted to the adhesion system, with amaximum gradient of 8%, and climbedto the foot of the funicular itself.The same cars were used on all three sec-tions of the electric railway (although, asmentioned above, on the middle sectionthey were hauled by a special rack loco-motive). They were roughly the size oftrams, but with three separate compart-ments, entered from the side and openabove the waistline, with curtains for useagainst wind or rain. The driving plat-forms, originally open, were also latergiven windscreens. A maximum of 24people could be seated in each car, withan additional six passengers standing onthe platform. The initial three cars (num-bered 1–3) were built by Schweizer

The song ‘Funiculi Funicula’ was inspired by the original funicular line. (Thomas Cook Archives)


Waggon AG of Schlieren, Zurich, and(according to hand-painted postcards)were light blue and cream. Each car hadfour separate braking systems, becauseof the steep gradients, and took its cur-rent (at 550 volts DC) through a bow col-lector. The first two rack locomotiveswere built by SLM. They each had two60-kW motors to drive the rack pinions,with enclosed bodies and two bow col-lectors, and four independent brakes. (Athird rack locomotive was supplied bySLM in 1906.)In the days before a public electricity sup-ply was available, an electric railway hadto generate its own power. At Vesuvius,this was done with gas engines, suppliedthrough a pipe running up the slope fromthe town gasworks. At the depot, twoBrown’s patent gas engines were coupledto Brown, Boveri & Company dynamos,arranged in parallel with a bank of Tudoraccumulators in such a way that whencars were not taking current, the dyna-mos would charge the batteries, and thesein turn would boost the supply when de-mand was heavy. The batteries also ab-sorbed current produced by the racklocomotives, which had regenerativebraking. Using gas to generate electric-ity was not the cheapest way, but itavoided hauling coal up the mountain.In later years, it is likely that the line wasfed from the public electricity supply, butno details have yet emerged.The electric railway opened on 28 Sep-tember 1903 and soon attracted newbusiness. An ascent of Vesuvius, whichhad previously required a long and te-dious carriage drive up the mountain tothe funicular station, could now be madewithout fatigue in less than 1 hour.The ascent began at Pugliano, fromwhich station the new line ran through a‘cultivated zone’ of vineyards (‘wheregrow the grapes from which the famousLacrima Christi is produced’) and of or-chards and gardens (‘in which orangesand lemons flourish in perfection and

roses and camellias bloom in profusion’).As the line climbed, the houses along theroute gradually disappeared and ‘charm-ing views’ were disclosed. Later, on thesteep rack section of the railway, the linepassed through ‘lovely chestnut and aca-cia woods’ intersected by ‘deep and ro-mantic ravines’, and views of the Bay ofNaples ‘even more enchanting than thosefrom the Rigi over the Lake of Lucerne’were presented to the tourists. The rail-way continued up from Eremo, where therack section ended, through ‘enormouslava and rubble fields, where lava lies allaround in the most wonderful shapes’,until it reached the foot of the funicular.A few minutes later, the crater itself wasreached, and the tourists gazed ‘on a pic-ture which will ever be remembered’.An ascent of Vesuvius, described as ‘oneof the most fascinating experiences in theworld’, quickly became an essential partof every tour to Naples. With the open-ing of the electric railway, the numbersof tourists increased dramatically, and ingood weather there would be up to 20trains each day, starting at 08:20. With24-seat cars running up and down at 35-minute intervals during busy periods, it

soon became necessary to increase thecapacity of the funicular. This was re-built in 1904, under a separate contract,with a conventional two-rail (1000-mmgauge) track on a concrete base, the twocars passing via a loop at the mid-point.Electric winding gear was installed, fedby an overhead cable from the depot, andnew cars, seating 18 persons and able tocarry another six on the platforms, werebrought in from Switzerland. They borethe words ‘Thos Cook & Son’ and‘Ferrovia Vesuviana’ on their sides.In the same year, Thomas Cook & Sondecided to build a 25-bedroom hotel atEremo, roughly halfway up Vesuvius. Thehotel was named ‘The Hermitage’ and theview it commanded was described asbeing ‘so beautiful and fascinating that itmay well be doubted if its equal exists inthe world’. Situated in the centre of ex-tensive park-like grounds, laid out withshady walks and seats so that visitorscould gaze out across the Bay of Naples,the hotel was an ideal residence for thosein need of rest. Indeed, the air aroundthe hotel was said to be so ‘pure and trans-parent’ that the lungs seemed to ‘expandwith delight in breathing it’.

Funicular car shortly before 1906 eruption (Thomas Cook Archives)




Rack locomotive about to push electric car up steep incline in 1934 (Thomas Cook Archives)

Unfortunately, the air around the hoteldid not remain ‘pure and transparent’ forlong. On 7 April 1906, Vesuvius struckback with one of the greatest eruptionson record, destroying the top part of thefunicular and smothering the whole areain volcanic ash. Despite newspaper re-ports that they had been ‘blotted out ofexistence’, the hotel and electric railwayremained intact. Moreover, within 12days of the eruption, the line betweenPugliano and the hotel at Eremo had beendug out from under the ash and servicehad resumed. However, it was back tohorses for the final ascent, and ThomasCook & Son built a zigzag bridle pathfrom the station to the summit, the as-cent taking about 1 hour instead of the10-minute funicular ride. The eventraises interesting questions as to how thefunicular was insured—if it was insuredat all—because no attempt to rebuild itwas made for 3 years.In 1909, a new funicular track was builtslightly to the south of the old one. Itopened in 1910, with two new five-baycars with end-loading platforms, andelectric lighting, fed through bow collec-tors from an overhead wire that alsoserved for bell signals and a telephone.This enabled the line to run after dark,allowing passengers to see the lights ofNaples, and for many years, a night ex-cursion was offered from 15 May to 15September. One new enclosed car (num-ber 4) was obtained for the electric rail-way, which was extended by 0.4 km tothe new funicular on 6 January 1913.The rebuilt installation was spared fur-ther volcanic interruption for 34 years.Traffic developed to a point where largercars were needed, and in the 1920s, thefour electric cars were joined by threelarger cars (numbers 5–7), fully enclosedand probably built in Italy. Car number5 seated 34 passengers, while the newernumbers 6 and 7 were longer, and seated44. The publicity stressed that the linewas the only railway in the world ascend-

ing an active volcano, and it is said thatevery passenger booked by Thomas Cookto anywhere in central or southern Italywould be issued a Vesuvius Railway cou-pon, whether wanted or not.However, the railway was losing moneyand costs in 1936 were 114% of receipts.Furthermore, increasing nationalism inItaly made it advisable to transfer the lineto a locally-registered company, and in1937, the Vesuvius Railway was handedover to the Società Ferrovia e FunicolareVesuviana SIA, a Thomas Cook subsid-iary. The 1939 Italian timetable showssix regular departures each day fromPugliano, at 08:00, 09:52, 10:25, 14:00,14:33 and 15:06, the first of which wasmainly for staff and supplies. The 08:00,09:52 and 14:33 ran throughout theyear—the others only in summer. Whentraffic was heavy, two cars would be runtogether and there were additional de-partures.When Italy joined WWII, the line waskept running by the local management,at least until the Allied landings. Shortlyafterwards in March 1944, Vesuviuserupted with considerable violence, andthe upper part of the funicular was de-

stroyed again. The electric railway didreopen, now under Allied control, but,as on previous occasions, passengers hadto walk up the steep path from the sta-tion to the crater. Visitors were few, costsrose and the line made a considerableloss.Thomas Cook & Son could see no pros-pect of finding the money to rebuild thefunicular, or of making it profitable, andoffered the whole for sale. It was sold inDecember 1945 to the Strade Ferrate Sec-ondaries Meridionale SpA (SFSM), thecompany operating the CircumvesuvianaRailway, for the sum of 3.1 million lire(L1000 = US$4.17 in 1946) in cash andshares. Nearly two-thirds of this went topay the bill presented by the Allied mili-tary for keeping the line going, leavingThomas Cook & Son with a 1.2 millionlire shareholding in SFSM shares whichrarely, if ever, paid any dividend. Thecars and locomotives were given a newcoat of cream paint, and continued torun.The first idea of the new owners was tochange the track gauge to their own 950-mm, connect the two lines at Pugliano,and run new 68-seat rack/adhesion elec-


Paul Smith

Mr Paul Smith is Company Archivist with The Thomas Cook Group Ltd. He has a BA in Medieval

Studies, as well as a Master of Archive Administration.

Original drawing of Hermitage Hotel opened in 1904 (Thomas Cook Archives)

tric cars from Naples to the summit. Thisambitious plan proved far too expensive,and by the end of 1948, it had been aban-doned in favour of building a road to theupper terminus and a chair-lift to the sum-mit. Meanwhile, Thomas Cook & Sonstill owned the run-down HermitageHotel at Eremo, but in 1949, they put itup for sale.The contract to build the chair-lift wasplaced in 1951 with Von Roll of Berne,and cost only a third of what it wouldhave cost to rebuild the funicular. It hadtwin-seat cars able to run every 30 sec-onds, giving a capacity of 240 passen-gers each hour, and took 5 minutes, atleast in theory (it has been known forpeople to be suspended in mid-air for 1hour). The opening date is unknown, butWagons-Lits made a booking contractearly in 1953. The electric railway wasstill working throughout 1952, but by1953, the improved road was completeas far as the observatory at Eremo, andthe excursion coaches from Naples (andregular bus from Pugliano) broughtpeople to this point, where they changedto a shuttle train for the final 18-minute

2.1-km journey to the chair-lift. A racklocomotive would push two cars (usuallynumbers 6 and 7) up from the depot eachmorning and stand at Eremo all day untilthe convoy returned home at night.Nothing moved at all on the section ofrailway below the depot, and the trackmay well have been cut by the new road.This arrangement continued for 2 yearswhile the road was built further up thevolcano, but the railway finally closedin the autumn of 1955 when the road wasfinished. The track was still there in1958, derelict and overgrown, but waslater removed and the cars and locomo-tives broken up for scrap. The course ofthe line can still be followed on foot,except where bridges over roads havebeen removed. Pugliano Station has

been demolished, because in 1972–73,the Circumvesuviana Railway waschanged into a subway and put partly un-derground through the area. PuglianoStation was replaced by Ercolano, a newstation from where the bus for Vesuviusnow departs, although most visitors travelby car or excursion coach from Naples.The Vesuvius Railway, one of ThomasCook & Son’s more unusual enterprisesin tourism finally came to an end, butVesuvius itself continues to attract visi-tors, and its ascent remains ‘one of themost fascinating excursions in the world’.Although the volcano has been quiet formore than 50 years, it is still regarded asdangerous, and experts say that it is ‘inthe phase preceding a reawakening’. Itseems that the story of Vesuvius and tour-ism has not yet ended. �

Acknowledgement

I am particularly indebted to J. H. Price, edi-tor of Cook’s Continental Timetable from 1952to 1985, on whose work much of the presentarticle is based.

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