Relaunching an old railway to promote innovative forms of tourism and enhancing the cultural heritage

In the past decades, in Europe, many railway lines have been abandoned in relation to strategies aimed at reducing the costs of railway companies. It hasn't always been a matter of happy choices. Some scattered experiences of restoring old railways show that it is possible not only to enhance the rail transport services making them more attractive to travellers of the lands crossed, but also to enhance the same lands in terms of tourism and culture, in a framework of environmental sustainability and social inclusion. After an illustration of some emblematic cases of tourist railways in singular contexts, the synthesis of a feasibility study relating to a project to revitalize an old railway is proposed, through a methodological path that integrates aspects of railway engineering, promotion of the environmental attributes and historical-monumental heritage, finally focusing attention on the potential positive impacts of the initiative, also in terms of land economic, cultural and social inclusion benefits. The project refers to the railway line that runs along the Ionian coast of Southern Italy, from Sicily (Syracuse) to Puglia (Lecce), crossing Calabria and Basilicata regions. It is one of the oldest railways in Europe and today considered ineffective and not very productive in terms of business, but with an extraordinary and undervalued abundance of opportunities for slow and cultural tourism, such as a singular concentration of archaeological sites from the Greek-Roman period.