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Train questions

Posted by (South Carolina) on

We will be arriving in Milan late September. We plan on taking the train for a day trip to Lugano while in Milan. I understand that is a regional train. Then we plan to travel between Milan and Venice and then Venice to Florence and then possibly back to Milan via high speed train. My question is two parts.

  1. When looking at the Trenitalia schedule, it looks like the high speed trains are not on the schedule yet...maybe? I looked at the schedule on the same days of the week we plan to travel but within the next month and there are many more options. We need to make a plane reservation that will depend on the train schedule so when can I expect the high speed trains to be added to the schedule?

  2. The train trips I've outlined above would be within a 10 day period. Would it be advantageous to get a train pass? Most of the point-to-point trips don't look terribly expensive so I wasn't sure about that. I'm not well versed on how passes work and I find the train websites a bit confusing!

Any other tips for Italian train travel are more than welcome!

Posted by
8952 posts

Your guess is as good as anyone’s on when they will be added to the website. No new high speed trains have been added to the trenitalia site in about 5 weeks. However, I have been told the schedule won’t change again for several months so you should be able to plan around the times for the trains that are showing.

Posted by
7277 posts

Train pass is usually not a cost savings in Italy
You can do the math to determine if it works for you but from the trips you have planned just as easy to buy point to point tix

Use the official train sites

Trenitalia- regional and fast trains
https://www.trenitalia.com/content/tcom/en.html

ItaloTreno -fast trains
https://www.italotreno.it/en

Both have easy to use apps

Lots of info here
https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-italy.htm

And here
https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation

Posted by
16168 posts
  1. You have to wait for the Fall timetable to be uploaded. In the meantime you can check prices and times for a date closer to now. They won’t change much, if at all.
  2. Forget the passes. It won’t pay in your case. The BASE price is the full price. You can see that now for a train close to today’s date. However if you purchase in advance there are discounted fares (Supereconomy and economy fares) that can save you up to half the fare. Those fares tend to disappear the closer you get to the date of travel. The only caveat is that once you purchase a ticket at a discounted fare, then you are locked with that choice. No refunds or no changes are possible, so you must be firm with your travel plans otherwise it’s money thrown out the window if you can’t make that specific train you book.
Posted by
3812 posts

Italotreno's version of the BASE tickets is called Flexi. It's usually cheaper and more flexible than trenitalia's BASE.

Note that the BASE and Flexi fares are always uploaded in advance with the discounted fares and that they won't change. As I have read on another forum: "It doesn't matter where and when you are going to get the train tickets, rest assured that you can't pay more than Base and Flexi"

Posted by
26 posts

Thanks for all the helpful information! This will make our planning much easier!

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