A Frenchman promoted the line, Armand Bayard de la Vingtrie, who received a concession to build it in February 1837 from King
Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies. The concession authorised Bayard to build a railway from the current location of
Napoli Centrale railway station outside the old walls of Naples along the
Bay of Naples to
Nocera Inferiore on the
Sorrentine Peninsula, a distance of , with possible extensions to
Salerno and
Avellino, both through mountainous country. The line was built of wrought iron rails mounted on large cubic stone sunk into the ground (as wooden sleepers used to distribute weights had not been invented), and the gauge was maintained occasionally with transverse bars. Three
steam locomotives were imported from
Longridge and Co of England: two
2-2-2 locomotives for passenger traffic,
Bayard and
Vesuvio, and one locomotive for goods traffic;
rolling stock was built locally. The king opened the first of the line from Naples to Portici on 3 October 1839. By the end of 1839, it had carried 131,116 passengers. It was extended to
Castellammare di Stabia in 1842 and Nocera in 1844. ==References==