Buying local train tickets

It depends on whether they are the high speed freccias or the regionale trains. Prices for regionales don't change, and the trains don't sell out. You can just buy them on the day of travel. There is no advantage to an advance purchase. Freccias, OTOH, do have price changes, usually increasing as departure nears, and since tickets come with seat reservations, they can sell out. However the least expensive advance tickets come with restrictions. To learn about trains in Europe, ant in Italy in particular, go to the Man in Seat 61 website. https://www.seat61.com/

Just use the Trenitalia App. That is what the locals do nowadays...

Only high speed trains and long distance services need to be reserved in advance. Local trains you can just buy the ticket up to about 10 minutes beforehand.

My first trip to italy not on a tour (my first trip was 1979 on an AMEX tour) was about 30 years ago. I went to the Rome station, bought a ticket, got on the train and sat down next to a lovely young woman from a country I had never heard of .... Moldova. We talked for a moment and then she looked down at my ticket and asked if I had validated it. Done what? I said. The woman grabbed the ticket out of my hand and jumped off the train and ran. 2 minutes later she was back with my now validated ticket ... seconds before the train left the station. On the return trip, back to Rome, I got on the wrong train. Right destination by wrong train. Instead of the express I was on the one that stopped every 5 minutes. The conductor looked at my ticket and started arguing in Italian. Another nice young lady got up, looked at my ticket and began arguing in Italian with the conductor. He left, she told me, its fine, wrong train, cheaper train, he shouldnt have messed with you.

lisa,

It's important to know what type of train you'll be travelling on for each leg of your trip. You can find that information on the Trenitalia website. Here are some thoughts....

• Tickets for the premium trains such as Freccia or Intercity have compulsory reservations that are specific to train, date and departure time. They can only be used on the specific train listed on the ticket, and passengers must sit in the assigned seats. If you board the wrong train, you'll be subject to hefty fines which are usually collected on the spot! You can also use the high speed trains operated by Italo Treno and the rules are similar.
• Tickets for the Regionale trains don't have reservations and the "comfort level" is more basic. Just board the train and if no seats are available, be prepared to stand for awhile. Those with unvalidated tickets can also face hefty fines!

Tickets can be purchased on the websites for the respective rail lines (linked above), from the automated Kiosks at the stations (they have English language menus), from a staffed ticket office or from one of the resellers such as Trainline (sites such as Trainline may charge a small fee, but I've never found the to be a problem; also they may not offer tickets for some of the smaller rail lines).

One important point to note is that if you buy paper tickets for the Regionale trains, these must be validated (time & date stamped) in the small track side machines prior to boarding the train on the day of travel. This explains the process - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxJBtMdJf30 .

Hope this helps.