Italian State Railway class 980

The FS class 980 was a rack locomotive built starting in 1908 for standard-gauge lines. The first four were ordered from the SLM for the line to Volterra in Tuscany with an incline of ten percent. In 1912 and 1913, SLM delivered eight more for the Paola-Cosenza line in Calabria.

They were designed after the Winterthur system that combines the adhesion and rack drive with compound working. This meant that the high pressure cylinders were at the bottom and drove the wheels, while the low pressure cylinders at the top drove the crank axle for the rack drive. The crank axle worked onto the rack wheels via a 1 to 2,4 reduction gear, what meant that the low pressure cylinders moved at more than twice the speed of the high pressure cylinders, enabling all to be of the same size.

At Volterra, the last stretch with rack operation was closed in 1958. On the Paola-Cosenza line, new vehicles first took over passenger and later also freight traffic. Only 980.002 was preserved and can be found in the Museum of Pietrarsa. The class 981 was a superheated successor of the 980 that was built by Italian manufacturer Breda.