The little steam-engine train D.H. Lawrence took to Sorgono still departs every day from Cagliari. It is exceedingly slow, especially by modern standards, but offers sights of almost incredible beauty, running on the edge of slopes with rivers below, sinking into deep sardinian macchia (the local moors), and winding its way through wild forests. Here follows an extract of Lawrence’s description:  

We are straggling now among the Gennargentu spurs. There is no single peak – no Etna of  Sardinia. The train, like the plough, balances on the steep, steep sides of the hill spurs, and winds around and around. Above and below the steep slopes are all bosky. These are the woods of Gennargentu. But they aren’t woods in my sense of the word. They are thin sprinkles of  oaks and chestnuts and cork-trees over steep hill-slopes. Cork-trees! I see curious slim oaky-looking trees that are stripped quite naked below the boughs, standing brown-ruddy, curiously distinct among the bluey-grey pallor of the others. The remind me, again and again, of glowing, coffee-brown, naked aborigines of the South-seas....The station are far between – an hour from one to another. Ah, how weary one gets of these journeys, the last so long. We look across a valley – a stones throw. But, alas, the little train has no wings, and can’t jump. So back turns the line, back and back towards Gennargentu, a long rocky way, till it comes at length to the poor valley-head. This it skirts fussily, and sets off to pelt down on its traces again, gaily. And a man who was looking at us doing our roundabout, has climbed down and crossed the valley in five minutes.  

Link al sito web delle Ferrovie della Sardegna