I need an education on local Italian train travel

For Italy you never need to buy tickets in advance unless you wish to take advantage of the huge savings offered. At any time you can go to the station and buy tickets for the next available train.

As far as validating tickets goes, if you don't book a specific train, for a specific time with a seat reservation you'll need to validate your ticket. If the train is for a specific time and has a specific seat number that is the only train your ticket is valid for so you won't need to validate your ticket. Basically, you validate for regional trains and not for any of the high speed trains.

I can't help you with international train travel.

donna

Where are you staying near Figline Valdarno? Dudda? Lucolena?
Anyway. Those are some of the funny village names I remember going through with my 2 wheels. Lots of sagre in the fall.
Let's say you are in an agriturismo near Dudda and want to take a day trip to Vienna.
The first thing I would do is tell you that Vienna is not such a great idea for a day trip from Dudda.
But if you insist, you could try to buy a ticket in Figline. You need to validate the portion to Florence for sure, since it's on a regionale. But from Florence to Vienna you will need to travel on long distance trains where seats are reserved therefore you don't need to validate anything. I'm not sure if you'll be able to purchase the whole trip in Figline, but certainly you should be able to purchase it once you get to Florence.

Jim,

As Roberto mentioned, Figline Valdarno to Vienna is not exactly a "day trip" as that trip will be about 12 hours.

Using the scenario you mentioned, walk into the ticket office and ask to buy a ticket from Figline Valdarno to Vienna. The ticket agent will probably only be able to sell you tickets to the first station in Austria (Innsbruck?). If that's the case, you'll have to buy tickets for the final segment when you arrive in Austria. Whether you'll need to validate or not will depend on which combination of trains you're using based on the departure time selected.

Let's use an example of a departure from Figline at 07:18 arriving Wien Westbahnhof at 19:30 (time 12H:12M, 3 changes). The first segment from Figline to Firenze Campo di Marte is a Regionale, so you'll need to validate. The next segment from Firenze to Verona Porta Nuova is via Freccia high speed, which has compulsory reservations so you can ONLY use the one train specified on the ticket (or risk hefty fines). The next segment from Verona to Insbruck is via EuroCity, so again compulsory reservations and you can only use the train specified. The final segment from Innsbruck to Vienna is via RailJet, and reservation is optional. The specifics of each trip will vary based on the combination of trains used for the departure time you choose.

As rail trips go, this will probably be a bit of an ordeal.

Hi,
We have reverse trip in June 24 from Vienna to Venice.
We bought tickets online via OBB and we have direct train without any changes.
Our train starts at 6:22 in the morning at Wien HBF, and we will be in Venice Santa Lucia at 14:02 same day , so our train travel will be about 8 hours.
Our tickets cost 29 Euro per person.
I hope you can buy your tickets online at www.oebb.at, I don't think you need a travel agent. We have been traveling all over Italy for last 3 years, and we haven't needed an agent.
Hope it will be helpful.
Have a great trip!

Jim give this website a look www.seat61.com/Italy

Thanks folks, I think I get it. Regionale trains need validation before boarding, long distance needs reservations but not validation. Roberto, I am staying in Poggio alla Croce.