Trains within Italy
 

I wanted to buy our train tickets within Italy in advance to get the super saver price. However, when doing this using the italiarail.com site, it kept on giving me the message "There are no solutions that respond to the search criteria." The tickets are for December. Is it because that the fare is loaded 90 days before departure? Thanks.

if your routes include R (Regionale) trains, those tickets are not available for purchase online more than 7 days ahead--and there is no benefit to purchase R tickets online becuase there are no discounts or reserved seating.

What routes were you trying to purchase?

Rome to Venice.

The R train issues should not effect Rome-Venice. The fares for December may not yet be loaded, especially if you are trying to book after December 10.

Yes, ellenem, it is right after Xmas.

Italiarail is NOT, as its publicity material lyingly implies, a site offering any kind of objective guide to available railway seats in Italy.

It's a promotional site for one Italian railway company - the State-owned Ferrovie dello Stato - much improved for intercity services, but still plagued by incompetence and corruption - and not helped by uninformed commentators (or the inevitable Marxist dinosaurs who believe capitalism has no role in public transport) who pretend it's still got a monopoly on intercity train travel.

From Rome to Venice (as well as all the major routes between Naples, Turin, Milan and Venice) FS' long-distance competitor Italotreno offers a real choice, always with more up to date rolling stock, often cheaper, occasionally a minute or two faster - but also with longer lead times for promotional fares.

There's no website allowing the two operators' fares to be compared, so you need to look at both sites.

Thank you, flanneruk. I will check this site.

Train schedules change around December 15th, so trains later than that date may not be available for reservation till the new schedules are published.

Yesterday I travelled with Italo from Turin to Florence. Nice service, not so much different from the Trenitalia Frecciarossa service. The Frecciarossa are more frequent and stop at major stations while Italo is housed at some relatively minor stations like Torino Porta Stura or Milano Porta Garibaldi or Roma Tiburtina.

As for those who believe that capitalism has a role in public transport, let us remember that if the mighty Italian taxpayer had not paid for laying the high speed rails, there would be no private Italo company to run over them. Italo, on its own, is 20% owned by SNCF (the French State railway company).

You might also watch for fare at the official Italian site:

http://www.fsitaliane.it/cms/v/index...0080a3e90aRCRD