In the same years the French were building a railway from Gibuti to Addis Abeba, and since the colonial proudness required that the “italian genius” could not be overcome by the french one, our railway did not stop at Asmara, but went further on in the middle of the country, to reach at first Cheren, and then Agordat and finally Biscia: further 227 km.

From Italy came the most modern steam locomotives, built by Breda in Milan and by Ansaldo in Genua, that exceeded the wall of the 35 km per hour. In the plain, of course, because in the climbing bends between Massaua and Asmara the speed was so low, that the british writer Evelin Waugh in Scoop described the passengers going down from the train, picking up blackberries and climbing again on the limping convoy.

Almost as an answer to the british irony, from the Fiat works two littorinas were shipped in 1934 to Massaua, having a 120 HP petrol engine and a maximum speed of 50 km per hour; on October 19, 1934, the daily newspaper of Rome could report on the maiden voyage from Massaua to Asmara: “The press men, as soon as they arrive in Massaua, take place  on an elegant and very fast Littorina consigned to the tireless skill of the  Genio Ferrovieri, that with a three-hour fast run reaches the Capital of the Eritrean Colony”.

The italian railway went on with its operation through the Forties, through the world war.
The british soldiers, conquiring Asmara on April 1st, 1944, declared that italian civil authorities would be kept at their places, forced the left-hand drive for cars, as the London gentlemen, named Bristol an hotel built in fascist-imperial style, and took away as a war booty the machinery of many italian factories and the telpherway that climbed from Massaua to the plateau (finally rebuilt in India).