Officine Ferroviarie Meridionali
Private carriage of the Companhia dos Caminhos de Ferro do Norte de Portugal (Portuguese Northern Railways Company). It was part of a lot that was built by the Officine Ferroviarie Meridionali, of Naples, and delivered on September 1931. This photograph was published on the Gazeta dos Caminhos de Ferro magazine no. 1062, of the 16th March 1932, and scanned by the Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa.
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| Railway and Aircraft manufacturer | |
| Successor | IMAM |
| Founded | pre 1918 |
| Defunct | 1935 |
| Headquarters | Naples, Italy |
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Number of locations
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Naples |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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Nicola Romeo,Alessandro Tonini, Giovanni Galasso |
| Products | locomotives, airplanes, sailplanes |
Officine Ferroviarie Meridionali or OFM was an Italian railway and rolling stock manufacturing company based at Naples. In 1915,Ing Nicola Romeo and Co Ltd owned by Nicola Romeo bought Officine Ferroviarie Meridionali and two other factories producing railway locomotives and other rolling stock (one was in Rome and another one in Saronno) to support his automobile activities and his dream about aviation and airplanes.
By 1922 the OFM factory was only producing railway locomotives and similar rolling stock parts. Nicola Romeo following closely the success of Fiat, he considered that the OFM Naples factory and its workforce was suitable to be trained in order to produce aircraft parts and even a plane. The first aircraft parts constructed by OFM were for a Fiat contract and production started shortly. As Fiat’s factories were fully employed with other projects, OFM produced in 1923 the sesquiplane Fiat CR.1 fighter as a sub-manufacturer. In parallel he was entrusted by the Banca Italiana di Sconto with managing its Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (ALFA), into which in 1918 he merged OFM to create Alfa Romeo. While this quickly became one of the world’s most famous automakers, the collapse of Banca Italiana di Sconto led Romeo to reacquire OFM. Through this he entered the aviation business in 1925 under the "OFM – Aeroplani Romeo" brand.
Obsessed with his aviation factory dream, Nicola Romeo hired Alessandro Tonini as OFM's chief designer. Tonini had a great experience in aerodynamics and airplane design as he had worked at Macchi on the flying boat fighter designs. OFM contacted Fokker and got production licence for the Fokker C.V. It was built by the Naples factory in 1927 as the OFM Ro.1. With the Ro.1 production line established, OFM turned its attention to its own first designs such as the Ro.1 Ridotto.
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