The Beginnings of the Railway in Sardinia

A few evenings ago Maria Rita and I went to her sister Patrizia and brother-in-law Gianfranco's apartment for dinner. After we'd eaten, as always, some fabulous food, the conversation turned to the famous English author D H Lawrence and his travel memoir of Sardinia Sea And Sardinia (which I have to confess that I've never read) and Patrizia actually produced an Italian translation Mare E Sardegna which was interesting to browse through briefly. Much of Lawrence's travel around Sardinia was done using the island's railway system and it was interesting to hear Gianfranco tell me that Sardinia owes its railway, completed around 1870, to a wealthy Welsh engineer named Benjamin Piercy who was so taken by the Sardinian landscape that he also built a villa, the Villa Piercy, in the British architectural style of the Victorian era in which he lived, on the hills at Bolotana and in the locality of Badd'e Salighes. He imported trees from Britain for its gardens, amongst plants and shrubs from other parts of the world, and today the surrounding gardens have become a public park. If I was understanding the conversation correctly (which was exclusively in Italian), the original four railway lines that Piercy was responsible for have become the tourist railway network, Il Trenino Verde. It is not a particularly fast network but very popular with tourists because of the breathtakingly spectacular views of some of the mountainous scenery on the island inaccessible from view by use of any other form of transport. I have read elsewhere that if you wish to get around the island quickly then using the railway system is not the way to do it, and Patrizia told me that the carrriages in use in central Sardinia still have wooden seats!