Early years in Milan, inaugurated in 1931 The company was instituted by an act on 22 April 1905, taking control over the majority of the national railways, which, until that time, were privately owned and managed. The president was nominated by the government. The first director general was
Riccardo Bianchi. In June 1912 Ferrovie dello Stato owned 5021 steam locomotives, 151 railcars, 10,037 coaches, 3371 baggage cars and 92,990 goods wagons. With the rise of
Fascism, a centralisation policy was carried out. The board of directors and chief administrator office were abolished at the end of 1922. The institution was administered by a commissioner, appointed by the King until April 1924. Since then, Ferrovie dello Stato was managed by the newly installed Ministry of Communications (including rail transport), under
Costanzo Ciano. After the
armistice on 8 September 1943, Italy
was divided and train operations were separately directed too, with headquarters in
Salerno for the south and
Verona for the north. and many sections of the national network were electrified and sometimes doubled. In the following years, 3 MU out of 4 were
668, which replaced many older units. Many electrical multiple units were also introduced during this period, like the ALe 601, progenitor of the
Ale 801/940 and
ALe 803 EMU, still in use today on regional service. During the 1970s, a new generation of electronically operated railcars and power trains were first introduced on the Italian network, starting with the G.A.I. (Gruppo Aziende Italiane) trains for regional and metropolitan service. The new
E.444 was the first attempt on
high-speed rail, with a top speed of . The ETR 401 (1976) was the first prototype of the new
Pendolino class. The old logo was renewed in 1982 and again in 1994, with the introduction of the . The
FS was left unchanged in its administrative structure until the end of 1985. From the following year, after 80 years, the
Azienda Autonoma delle Ferrovie dello Stato was replaced by a new company,
Ferrovie dello Stato.
1986–present The newly born
Ferrovie dello Stato underwent major structural transformations between 1986 and 1992. The workforce was reduced to half: from 216,310 employees in 1988 to 112,018 in 1999. Divisions were created to rationalise the management. The organisation was converted from a government agency to a
state-owned enterprise in 1992 with the creation of the new Ferrovie dello Stato SpA, a
joint-stock company, following a European guideline. However, it was not
privatised: it remained fully owned by the Italian Government. In July 2016 Busitalia (part of Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane) purchased the Dutch company
Qbuzz. In February 2017
Trenitalia bought the British
train operating company c2c from
National Express. In September 2017, an agreement to buy 100% of the Greek railways
TrainOSE for was signed. ==Company structure==