Milano Centrale train station

Absolutely. Just be sure that you know your car number that's on your ticket, and validate your ticket.

In terms of distance between trains 30 minutes would be fine. Your problem is that Italy is not famous for railway punctuality, so 30 minutes on paper may be much less on the ground. Any ideas which train you would be arriving on?

http://www.milanocentrale.it/en/map/#

Yes. It is a terminus station with all platforms on the same level. So all you have to do is walk to the front of your train, look at the big departure board to see which platform your train is departing from, and walk a short distance to that platfrom and allong the train to your coach.

Photo of the station. You can see all the trains lined up: http://symenglish.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/milan1.jpg

Thanks for all the replys. We will be coming from Varenna.

and validate your ticket.

Not necessarily. If you have assigned seats and carriage on a specific train at a specific time, there's no need to validate. Validation only applies to trains on which you don't have an assigned seat, such as regionale trains.

An exception would be If you pre-purchased a complete journey that, say, involves a first leg on a "fast train" with assigned seats and a change to a specific regionale for the 2nd leg, your regionale ticket is already validated so no need to stamp it before boarding.

Varenna trains seem to be reasonably reliable and arrive in the middle of the station, which is helpful.

Walking to the front of the platforms to check the big boards for arrival/departure info sounds very easy until you're there with throngs of other travelers dragging luggage and kids and strollers and all trying to do the same thing. Milano Centrale can certainly be a mad house so make certain your valuables are in your hidden pouch.

Thanks again for all the info. Very helpful!

This video is a few years old, but the first part will give you some idea of what the station looks like. One change that you'll notice is that there are now "gates" between the track area and the rest of the station.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kB1UGpjFHc

Make sure you know the number of your train---something like ES 9525, for example--- as well as the final destination if you are getting off at an intermediate stop. That is how they are listed on the "big board".

The train I gave as an example, EuroStar 9525, goes from Milano Centrale down to Naples. It stops at Bologna, Firenze, and two stations in Rome, and you could be riding it to any of these for disembarking. But on the board it will show up as going to Napoli. The intermediate destinations will scroll by underneath the main listing from time to time if you want to confirm. But the train number is the main clue.

To confirm intermediate stops, there is usually also a paper poster near the tracks (yellow for Partenze (Departures), white for Arrivi (Arrivals).

We are going with the 30 minute connection from Varenna to Milan. We have an hour in the Milan train station when going from Milan to Varenna so that will give us plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with the Milan train station ahead of the return trip. Thank again for all the help!