Raffaele's picture appears to be in a building other than the Asmara shop.  At first, I thought this was one of theother FIAT Littorine.  Upon closer examination, I determined that it must be the Brown Boveri railcar.

Mike Cunningham, in The Eritrean Railway Phoenix identified a "small railcar" as being from the former Italian Somaliland Railway.  I didn't recall ever seeing informationon such a car.  He showed it as having been built by Brown-Boveri in 1935 and having the number 4067.  I wrote him and asked him if it could be the smaller of the FIAT cars.  He said that was not likely as this was noticably smaller and he didn't think that the one foot would have been that noticable.

Recently, I found a website which solved the mystery of the small railcar.  It is shown below.

Italian Somalia railway, experiment with rail car and wagon (950mm gauge)
              Automotrice della Somalia con rimorchio
              (Ministero delle Colonie, Esperimenti di trazione ferroviaria
con motori a scoppio a trazione diretta sulle strade ferrate della Somalia
Italiana, estratto da
              "Rassegna Economica delle Colonie", 19-09-1931 p.9)

C.S.Small in Far Wheels provided an "all time roster."  It was missing this small railcar:  This roster provides for a closer match to the 8 shown in Jane's World Railways.

Recently, Giuliano Chittò sent me a copy of Le Ferrovie Coloniali Italiani.  In there, there were other pictures of this style car.  The roster shows two railcars, 28 and 29, were built by SPA-A in Mogadiscio in 1930.  Their power train was A-1.  They could attain a top speed of 70 km/h.

GRAF©1975

GRAF©1975
 

Frederick C. Gamst said that 4067 was diesel electric with a V6 eingine and that was being used as a generator car.  He, too, says it was built by Brown-Boveri.

In Le Ferrovie Coloniali Italiane, Brown-Boveri is shown as TIBB.  Renato Gaudio tells me that TIBB is Tecnomasio Italiano Brown Boveri.

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