The testimony of the demolished guard houses keeps alive the memory of a form of human settlement that has since been forgotten…the block house or railway guard house, which, whatever else you may say of it, was a place with a perfect work/life balance.

The train schedule determined the rhythm of everything else that was done, which must necessarily be coordinated with the arrival of the train, whose passage set the pace of day-to-day existence and represented the principal responsibility of the guard, originally only indirectly connected with the railway, as the person in this position held a type of contract referred to as an “assuntoria”: a contract to provide a service, which was entirely separate from the type of contract characterising the employment relationship, though no less binding.