Pages tagged: Italy

We chanced this week on a timetable for European night trains in 1999. So it’s interesting to look back and see which trains were running 25 years ago. By 1999, many European high-speed lines were already up and running, so the overnight network had already been trimmed back from its peak in the 1970s and 1980s.

The great advantage in travelling by train in Europe vs. taking the plane is that you can stop off in small places. Here's a list of wonderful small towns which are perfect to fit in on many train-based itineraries.

Would it not be so much better if dozens of cars could be loaded onto a car train so that parents and kids could cruise to their holiday destinations in comfort during the day? Just think of the carbon emissions saved. A half century ago, there was just such a train. It was called the Christoforus Express. We take a look at car trains of yesteryear, focusing on daytime services where motorists could sit back and let the train take the strain.

July 2023 sees changes to train services in Italy, France and Spain with a number of important new routes launched. They include Naples to Bari, Madrid to Marseille and Lyon to Barcelona.

With the new Italian rail timetables which started on 11 June, there are now eight premium trains each day running down to the toe of Italy. So this summer, the fierce competition between Trenitalia and Italo on this main route south from Naples ramps up with both operators extending their market reach by serving new communities.

With the new timetables for 2022 which come into effect across Europe on 12 December, private rail operator NTV Italo will start serving Genoa, linking the Ligurian city with Naples. The new service comes at a time when Italy's national operator Trenitalia downgrades its daily Genoa-Venice service from a Frecciarossa 1000 train to a Frecciargento.

New train services have been launched to the Italian city of Trieste. In late May, private operator NTV Italo introduced a direct train from Trieste to Naples and there's a new Eurocity service from Trieste to Vienna on offer from mid-June 2021.

Milan, Budapest and Berlin are spots where hapless travellers are prone to make for the wrong station, but of course it can happen in any city with multiple stations, and particularly where visitors are perhaps not familiar with the local geography and the various station names. And a last-minute change of departure station can and does happen.

Engineering work on the line between Bologna and Florence, where the overnight ÖBB sleeper services to Rome and Livorno are routinely routed via the 18-km long Appennino Tunnel, means diversions on some days. So some Italian cities, not normally served by Nightjet services, will benefit from an occasional direct overnight train to Vienna or Munich.

As Europe's rail operators face reduced demand because of the pandemic, many services are being suspended from early November. We review developments in Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Russia and elsewhere.

The opening in 2016 of the Gotthard Base Tunnel led to big time savings on the Zürich to Milan route, and now there are further improvements in the offing. Earlier this month, the Ceneri Base Tunnel was officially opened. It is a new link offering much faster journeys through Switzerland’s southernmost canton of Ticino, used by all fast trains that follow the Gotthard route south into Italy.

Imagine you have an unexpected hour or two at a railway station far from home. What are the ingredients of a pleasing station? Perhaps uplifting architecture, a relaxed café, a decent bookshop and an engaging range of trains to watch. Paul Scraton reflects on the ideal railway station.

Here is an update on European night train services as of July 2020. In this post we particularly take a look at night sleepers which, for one reason or another, have not yet been reinstated. But there are also some entirely new routes.

Although some summer-season trains will not be running this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, there are still plenty of services which will operate. Here we give an overniew of some of the summer specials which this year are running to Catalonia, the Alps, the North Sea and Baltic coasts and to Italian resorts.

Reggio di Calabria has already had its taste of Frecce trains, but only the lesser grades – Frecciargento (FA) and Frecciabianca (FB) rather than the posh Frecciarossa. But that's about to change in June 2020 when the first Frecciarossa will make its way from Turin to Italy's far south.

It's going to take a long time for Europe's long-distance international train services to get back to normal, but many local trains across frontiers are already running again.

Paul Scraton recalls his first European rail adventure back in 1999. Armed with an Interrail pass and the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable and accompanied by two friends, Paul travelled from Zürich to Prague by train. It was the first long rail leg in a European tour.

We take a look at Europe's fragmenting network of international rail links as passengers stay at home during the Coronavirus pandemic. Rail operators in western Europe have responded a little more slowly to the growing threat than those further east.

Direct from the Alps to the Gulf of Taranto: 16 September 2019 sees the launch of a new and extraordinarily long Frecciargento route linking Italy’s Alto Adige (or South Tyrol) province with Calabria. Trenitalia extends an existing Frecciargento service from Bolzano to Rome to Sibari.

As elsewhere across Europe, new train timetables are introduced in Italy next Sunday. In this post for European Rail News, we look at the country's expanding Frecciarossa network.

Italian rail operator Trenitalia is busy finalising details with its Slovenian partner for a new direct train service linking Ljubljana to Trieste which is most likely to start on 9 June 2018.

A new timetable comes into effect on 20 November that changes the frequency of Thello Eurocity services on the route from Marseille via Nice to Milan. Read on for further details.

We take a look at some changes on the Moscow to Paris and Nice services run by Russian Railways that come into effect in mid-December 2017.

While major revamps of European rail timetables normally take place in mid-December each year, there are also mid-year revisions of schedules. We look at some new travel opportunities for summer 2017.

It has been a while since Austrian railway carriages were last seen in Trieste. But the former Habsburg port may well secure a direct rail link with Austria in summer 2018.

Austrian operator ÖBB and NTV Italo will run train services to Rimini on Italy’s Adriatic coast during the summer 2016 season. ÖBB will extend its Munich to Bologna service and Italo trains will speed to Rimini from Milan.

Many travellers today are keen to book trips a long time in advance. And, if train travel is to compete with planes, then long booking horizons are essential. We look at international TGV services which allow customers to book their tickets four months in advance.

With an Expo theme that foregrounds environmental choices (Feed the planet, energy for life’) the organisers of Expo 2015 are keen that visitors to the World Fair leave their cars at home and travel by train to Milan for the event. So much so, that Expo 2015 looks set to break all records when its comes to the sheer number of visitors arriving directly at the exhibition site by long-distance train.

In the two or three months prior to the annual revamp of European rail timetables, there is inevitably speculation and angst about how the new timetables might impact on travel plans. We have a glimpse at the travel opportunities introduced by the new Eurostar services for travellers leaving from London St Pancras.

This weekend sees the restoration of the direct train service from the French Riviera to the Russian capital. The direct Russian train to Nice had to be suspended in January, following a catastrophic landslide which closed part of the coastal rail route that runs west from Genoa to the French border.

When British Railways introduced the Inter-City brand in 1966, no-one could possibly have anticipated how the idea would be emulated and adapted by railway administrations across Europe. Today, the term Inter-City (or IC) is used for a variety of train services – we take a closer look at the Inter-City brand across Europe.

For many years, Venice enjoyed a direct Moscow train service, but it was unhappily axed last December — a victim of the demise of the nightly Budapest to Venice service which carried the through carriages from Moscow. But the Moscow to Venice itinerary could well return, a result of the re-routing of the existing Moscow to Nice train, which now follows a quite different route from Vienna to Verona.

Domodossola has sleek trains aplenty. There are great expresses that purr north through the Simplon Tunnel into Switzerland or slide south towards Milan, hugging the west side of Lago Maggiore along the way. But lovers of great scenery and unusual trains head down into the concrete zone, there in the subterranean depths of Domodossola railway station to board the little train that rattles east across the valley and climbs into the hills beyond.