An early picture of Menaggio station before the platform was extended
The 1885 timetable showed two round-trips each day leaving Porlezza at 07:40 and 13:25 and departing on the return trip from Menaggio at 11:00 and 14:50. The timetable allowed 58 minutes to travel in either direction. The slowest section was the 21 minute steep climb or descent between Menaggio and Grandola which included the reversing manoeuvre at the "regresso".
An early picture of Menaggio station before the platform was extended
Subsequent timetables had four, five or six round-trips each day with the journey time reduced to 50 minutes. Normal train services were operated by a single locomotive hauling a maximum load of 49 tons (up to three carriages or 10 ton wagons). Photographs of the railway indicate that locomotives always ran smoke-box first except on the short descent from the regresso into Menaggio where the locomotives ran cab first. Turntables at Menaggio, Porlezza and the regresso enabled the locomotives to be turned.
In 1911 an average of 37 steamboats visited Menaggio each day. A large proportion of the 234,000 passengers embarking or disembarking at Menaggio in 1911 used the Menaggio-Porlezza railway.
May 1914 rail (Menaggio-Porlezza) and boat (Porlezza-Lugano) timetable.
The tourist traffic on which the railway depended ended abruptly with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. After Italy declared war against Austria in May 1915, the railway was used to transport troops and military material to build and supply impressive defence lines in the surrounding mountains (on Monte Crocetta and Monte Crocione).