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A few train queries

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We shall be travelling from Rome-Florence-Venice - Milan during our 2 week stay starting this sunday. A few train related queries before we begin our journey.

  1. We have booked all the trans through Italia rail . The e-tickets say that there is no need to validate the tickets prior to boarding the trains. I've seen a Rick Steves video saying that all tickets need validation prior to boarding them. So do we need to validate or not.
  2. Our flight back is from Milan (Malpensa) T1 terminal. Does the train from Milan centrale go to T1 (have read that it only goes to T2).
  3. Is there a place in Milan centrale station where one can safely store luggage for a few hours.
Posted by
23653 posts

  1. Only, only Regionale train tickets purchased at a machine or in the station or at a travel agency need to be validated (time stamped). All other tickets, except Regionale, are specific to day, time, train and seat and therefore since they are only good on one train, no need to validate. Miss the train and most tickets are dead. IF (not recommended) you purchase a Regionale ticket on-line then that ticket has a specified four hour time window when it valid for use any Regionale train between specified stations. You cannot use it earlier or later - only during the window.

  2. There is only one station at the airport - but it is easy to walk to the other terminals.

  3. There is left luggage in the Centrale station in Milan.

Posted by
487 posts

To add more detail that has not been mentioned, if you have seat assignments on a specific train at a specific time, those do not need to be validated because when they can be used and not be used is very clear. Regional train tickets can be used on different trains at different times, they are open ended, so validating (a time stamp) is how they know that you are using your ticket. Once the time stamp from the validation machine expires it is no longer a valid ticket.

Now the question we had one time was due to a broken validation machine. The machine punched the ticket but did not print a time stamp. So what do you do then? We were afraid to use a different machine because with 2 punches it might look like we reused a ticket. I think the consensus is to find and tell the ticket checker immediately and they can handwrite a validation code. Better to find them before they find you and it looks like you are trying to cheat the system.

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