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Stressed over Trenitalia weekend schedule in October

I will be traveling quite a bit on Trenitalia over multiple weeks in October. I thought I was ahead of the game by pre-booking our longer distance fast trains and adding detailed notes to my spreadsheet for the shorter moves which have multiple regional trains per day. For those days I indicated the departure times, regional train numbers, and gave myself a few options for each day for flexibility but did not pre-book.

All good, except today I look at the Trenitalia site and notice the frequent Sat/Sun regionals between Florence and Siena have disappeared for the first two weekends in October. There are plenty in September, and seem to reappear on a slightly different schedule for the final weekends in October. These are not trains showing sold out, but rather, just disappeared from the schedule all together on those first two weekends.

Does anyone know if there might be something going on those weekends that I am not thinking of? Holidays, construction, etc? I tried chatting with TrenItalia and they assured me it was not strike or construction related but who knows? Perhaps they do a temp schedule shift in early October to re-align for Winter schedules?

Posted by
407 posts

According to https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-italy.htm,

If some trains are shown, but others are missing...

Trenitalia loads trains in blocks, usually high-speed trains first and regional, InterCity & sleeper trains later. I've seen high-speed trains loaded, but not regional trains. I've seen regional trains loaded, but not high-speed trains. Intercity trains to Sicily and ICN sleeper trains usually get loaded last, after other trains. The Milan-Sicily night train usually gets loaded last of all! So if you don't see all the trains you expect to see, don't assume that the missing trains have all been mysteriously cancelled, assume they haven't been loaded yet. Wait!

I hope this helps! There is some additional troubleshooting info near the bottom of the above page.

Posted by
8454 posts

Why not just take the bus from Florence to Siena?
It is faster, cheaper and drops you up in town instead of down below where the train station is

Posted by
3401 posts

Taking the bus from Florence to Siena is faster and bus drops you closer to city center. Train drops you at the edge of the city.

Posted by
10 posts

I am more than willing to take the bus, but I must be looking in the wrong spot. We are staying near Firenze SMN, and all buses that I can find for Oct 12th seem to depart from Villa Costanza which appears to be a 1.5 hour T1 tram ride from SMN? What is the best source to look up bus options?

Thanks!

Posted by
10 posts

Thank you all for the help. It looks like there is a 9:10am 131R bus on Sundays that will work for us. I can't pre-buy the ticket since it's several weeks out, but the schedule looks promising. There may be a change to schedule after 9/15 I am reading correctly, so I'll just have to wait and see how it changes.

What is the best bus stop to get off on in Siena? I know from the train station there is the escalator up to the city center.