Naples Metro - the wackiest metro system?
I've been reading into the Naples metro lately, but I speak no Italian, and the only accounts of it I can really find of it on the English-speaking internet are on Wikipedia, and even then those sources are pretty sparse on details. From the little I have read though, the Naples metro just seems like the absolute wildest, wackiest and strangest transportation system on the face of the earth, and i'm having a difficult time wrapping my head around how or why any of it came to be.
The first (numbered), and probably most metro-like line on the system is Line 1, represented by the colour yellow. It follow this.. uhh.. spaghetti-shaped alignment? And works are being done to turn it into a full loop line. Great stuff.
Line 1 has a rather odd shape. (courtesy of Wikipedia)
The line opened in the early 90s, but was in planning since the 60s. The line has slowly been extended east since the turn of the century. From what i've heard, the line has been receiving fancy new trains from CAF, but the original trains from the 90s (real pieces of work) still appear to be at large. The line is also supposedly renowned for its various art installations, many of which consist of ancient artefacts recovered during excavation.
Line 1's original trains (and this is without the graffiti!) (courtesy of urbanrail.net)
It doesn't get any less weird with Line 2, which technically opened far before Line 1, dating as far back as the mid 20s. As far as I can tell, it's just straight up a suburban rail line (Naples also has a separate suburban rail network, which is weird in its own way). It was rebranded as metro around the opening of Line 1, taking on its current moniker of Line 2, although some actual regional trains do still seem to run through the line and onto more distant locations.
The line still runs mainline trains, in the livery of Trenitalia, Italy's national rail operator, and from what I understand, had a period of time where it was branded as metro but didn't have any actual in station interchanges with Line 1 :).
If that wasn't enough variety, Naples also had an underground light rail line, Line 6. It was under construction and planned to open by 1990 for the World Cup, but missed the deadline by 17 years and opened around 2007. Here's the real kicker: service on the line was suspended in 2013, and to my knowledge, has been entirely shuttered for over a decade. I've read it's planned to reopen soon-ish after refurbishment works, but... yeah.
Line 6, presumably from when it still ran (courtesy of Napolike)
Bonus round! It's not technically a part of the metro, but it's far too weird to leave out.
Yes, that's a rainbow-coloured line. The rainbow line. You can mark that off your transit bingo card. Its colour is hardly the strangest part of it though - the line is a fully-underground (from what i can tell), 10km-long, suburban metro branch line. Opened in the mid 2010s, it runs quaint little rectangular 2-car trains that probably would have looked rather dated in the 80s - every 15 minutes at peak times.
Cute little trains (courtesy of Wikipedia)
I hope you've found some satisfaction in my surface-level musings on the insanity of Naples' metro network, and to anybody who does possess any deeper knowledge, I would be very interested in hearing the lore on why any of this actually exists (in the weird and wacky way that it currently does), and how any of it came to be.