Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the historic event that guided a new era in transportation and put Italy on the fast track to unification. On this day in 1839, a steam train called Vesuvio pulled an eight-carriage train from Portici to Naples, inaugurating the first Italian Railroad.

The Italian railroad system is one of the most significant parts of the infrastructure of Italy, with a total length of 24,227 km (15,054 mi). Railways were presented in Italy when it was as yet a separated nation.

The first line to be based on the peninsula was the Naples–Portici line, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which was 7.640 m long and was inaugurated on October 3, 1839, nine years after the world’s first “modern” inter-city railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

Withdrawing around early afternoon, the train finished the four-and-a-half-mile journey to Naples in under 10 minutes, conveying travelers including King Ferdinand II of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies—or Regno Delle Due Sicilie as Naples and Sicily were then referred to—as well as the French engineer Armando Giuseppe Bayard de la Vingtrie, whom King Ferdinand enlisted to construct the railway.

In excess of 85,000 travelers rode the line during the accompanying two months, demonstrating that there was public demand. In years to come, new ferrovie (or “iron ways”) were laid down, associating the capital city of Naples to Caserta in the north as far south as Salerno.

At the point when Vesuvio made its maiden voyage, the Italian peninsula was as yet an isolated area—however, the foundation of railways joined the Kingdom of Italy. When of unification in 1861, more than 1400 miles of railway crisscrossed the nation. The new government extended the national railway network, and by 1875, somewhere in the range of 5,600 miles (around 9,012 kilometers) of track associated the greater part of Italy’s significant cities. In years to come railways would give a method for transporting perishable nourishment in refrigerated cars, facilitating trade between regions.

Trains have played an indispensable job in Italian history and culture, motivating art from people’s songs to posters, demonstrating the significant effect of train travel.