EC 311 Lugano to Verona—-cannot book for 23/9

It seems they are working on the tracks when commuters and students do not use trains. Maybe it's one of the lines to be renovated before the winter Olympics.

Works can be completed earlier than expected, I'd wait for late August and check both websites again.

There are Freccia trains from Milan to Verona, you can depart from Locarno at 10:25 and arrive in Verona at 13:58.
If you are forced to change train in Milan, don't pass the turnstiles and remain in the tracks area. I'd simply find a bench by the intended departure track to Verona, sit down and wait there. Keep an eye on departure monitors hanging over the platforms.

Trains do not sell out months in advance. If they did they would be useless. If I look at EC311 for tomorrow I see that tickets are still available. In fact, if I look at Lugano - Verona for today I see that you would have had no issue getting a ticket at the station just now. Trains do not sell out fast. A railway does not need full trains to make money, like an airline.
The advise to book early is to secure a discount, not to secure a seat.

It is quite common that weekend schedules get modified because of engineering works, and as a result bookings for those trains opens late. The system just does not have good error messages stored for that. It cannot distinguish between "there are no seats because there are no seats left" and "there are no seats because no seats have been loaded in the reservation system". That this error gets unnoticed is because Europeans (who are the ones building these systems) fail to realise that there are people wanting to book trains months in advance.

My tip:
- You are going Locarno - Verona, so you book Locarno - Verona on www.sbb.ch. There is no need to split bookings. When travelling by train you book a trip, not a sequence of trains.
- 95% of all the confusion Americans encounter when trying to book European train tickets comes from booking to early. Wait till August. Then look again.

Thank you both. I am trying to book the journey now to save some money, not because I fear the trains will sell out—-I know they do not.

My usual practice for travel in Italy is to buy our tickets for the fast Frecce, EC, and Italo trains 2-3 months ahead to get a good price. That worked very well for our September 2022 and March 2023 trips with just 2 of us. Now, with 8 people traveling, we will save even more by booking ahead.

There is a notice on the SBB website about a “Fahrplan änderung” for EC 311 that Saturday, together with advice to check back later. So Dario’s explanation about weekend trackwork makes perfect sense. I will just have to decide whether to wait and see if the work is completed and bookings open up, or go ahead and buy the cheap tickets through Milan now. Dario has offered a good solution for that; staying in the track area instead of exiting through the turnstiles will resolve most of my misgivings about noise and chaos at Milano Centrale.

Something similar happened to my Sister who wanted to book the EC from Milano to Spiez early enough. But for today for a long time the train was not bookable, and then when it finally appeared its origin was changed from Milano Centrale to Milano Garibaldi. The train became bookable only two weeks ago, and never made it in to the European system, so was never bookable except via Trenitalia or SBB. And that was a problem as she has an Eurail Pass.... But we found a workaround, and she is now only minutes away from Interlaken.

I guess the same thing will happen with the EC311. Maybe we are dealing again with works in Milano Central, or its approaches, and Trenitalia has not decided what to do. They might decide to route via Garibaldi, but maybe not. We will know closer to the date. Be aware that if you book Milan - Verona separately from Locarno - Milano that you may end up with an issue if they decide to reroute some trains to Garibaldi and others to Centrale. So maybe wait and see.

Lola,

That particular departure is not available on Trainline either, so the track work explanation make sense. In the same situation, I would wait a few weeks to see if something changes, or choose one of the other departures with one change.

I found one of the trains between Milano Centrale and Verona is also not for sale on Trenitalia that day, but an earlier one is. The Economy fares in 2d class are already sold out on that one. I will wait a bit longer and check back.