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Eurostar, Italy’s fastest train

The Eurostar, which travels only by day and only stops in the most important Italian cities, is the fastest and most comfortable train in Italy. Reservations on the Eurostar are obligatory, but free.

There is a restaurant between the first and second class carriages. Eurostar trains have special compartments for your luggage – these compartments are not guarded, though.

Delays on the Eurostar

If a Eurostar train in Italy is delayed by more than one hour, you have a right to be reimbursed. This involves finding the special, hidden, office dealing with reimbursements, lining up there, filling out a form and then hoping that you erally get your money back. By this time you will at least two hours late in stead of at least one.

Outside Italy

The Eurocity and Eurocity Night trains travel on international routes and as soon as you leave Italy, the train tariffs of the countries you are traveling through will apply. You need to find out beforehand whether or not reservations are required for these trains.

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Interregionale, Regionale and Diretto Trains

The Interregionale, Regionale and Diretto trains travel shorter distances and are slower and, especially during the peak hours, not very comfortable. On these trains it is sometimes even difficult to find space to stand in the gang-paths, since tickets are sold whether there are seats left or not.

The reason for this is that the tickets for these trains can be bought up to 2 months before your actual travel date. You will have to validate them by stamping them in one of the small yellow machines you can find attached to the pillars at the beginning of each track.

Slow Travel Movement

These kind of trains are the favorites of the so-called Slow Travel movement, since traveling on them gives the tourist, or traveler, a chance to meet with the locals. Italy is a beautiful country and there are many railway stretches where it can definitely be enjoyable to travel as slowly as possible (the cliffs near Cinqueterre, or the Tuscany part of the trip between Florence and Rome), but if you choose the wrong moment to travel you might well end up finding out that local armpits have a lot more in common with your own than you might expect.

Arrivals and departures

In every italian railway station the yellow schedules indicate the departure times and the white schedules the arrivals.

The yellow schedules indicate the final destination of the trains in big, bold black letters. The smaller major stops are indicated in smaller bold letters, whereas the minor stops (if there are any) are indicated in normal lettering.

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The Italian word for “railway track” is binario and is indicated as “bin” on the schedules. Note that in bigger stations like Rome Termini or Firenze S.M.N. one train’s delay can cause a chain reaction and because of this a change of platform as well. Therefore it is always necessary to make sure that your train will actually be leaving on the track indicated on the yellow schedules by comparing it to the monitors in front of the tracks and, in the big stations, to the big black boards put up high in the railway station’s main hallways.

When studying the schedules you need to keep an eye out for the words festivi (only on Sundays and public holidays) and feriali (only on weekdays, including Saturdays).

It is possible to look up the schedules on the Trenitalia website.