I like riding the trains. It’s a far more civilized means of transportation than getting squished into a tiny seat on a flying tin can and then getting set down in a field far from the city you want to visit.
I especially like riding on Italian trains. They’re cheap enough. Sure, some of the trains are crowded, but by now I pretty much know which ones get clogged at what times and can avoid them—or at least buy first class tickets.
But the thing is: Italy doesn’t really have a good train map available. The web just isn’t made for the kind of detail the explorer needs. So, we can offer you an Italian train map with just the cities most tourists are interested in along the major train lines. Or, we can zoom in a bit and give you a specific look at an individual line with a bit more detail, still eliminating the small suburban stations you probably aren’t interested in, like our Torino to Trieste rail map.
But the Italian rail system has a plethora of small lines you probably don’t know about. Some are freight lines that allow heritage trains to run on them. You can get out on a weekend and spend your time zipping along behind a smelly old diesel engine going nowhere. This excites some people.
And there are some small, private lines not run by the Italian rail system, like Puglia’s Ferrovie Sud-Est. You can go to Gallipoli on the FSE, one of my faves.
How do you find out about all these small lines—all these potential destinations—if you didn’t rent or lease a car and still want to see some small town Italy? Well, I’ve just taken possession of some extraordinary rail maps. I’m staring at the detail on the Liguria-northern Tuscany section as I type. It’s incredible. (It also explains any mistakes I may make at the keyboard.)
In any case, if you’re a train aficionado and you want to know the location of every train station that an Italian train might stop at, get yourself over to European Railway Atlas and order the maps you need. The Italian one is less then $5 once you’ve converted the money. I used PayPal and Mike sent me the PDF the same day. Highly recommended. Painless. Detailed.
These maps even tell you which lines are single track. This will come in handy when you’re in your train waiting motionlessly in the station for no apparent reason and your sweet honey leans over and asks you why the train isn’t moving. You can say, “we’re waiting for the train coming from the other direction because we were too stingy to pay the supplement to travel on the suicide train.”
Women love that sorta thing. Really. Your face will heal, trust me. Couple days max.