Trams in Italy

A tram near the Colosseum in Rome

This post is the last of a series on trains I saw and/or rode while on vacation in Italy. Start at the beginning if you like.

Trams in Rome

I saw a number of trams / streetcars while my wife and I were in Rome. We never had a reason to ride one, but I made a point of photographing them on a few occasions.

There are four types of trams running in Rome: ATAC 7000 series, SOCIMI, Cityway 1 and Cityway 2. The lead photo and the one below are Cityway 2 trams. These were manufactured by Fiat Ferrovia (now part of Alstom); the Rome Transport Company (Azienda dei Trasporti di Roma, ATAC) placed an order for 50 trams in 1998. They are bidirectional, full low floor trams operating on 600V DC and running on a track gauge of 1445mm (close to 4' 8.5").

Cityway 2 tram in Rome

The next tram is a Cityway 1 tram, at the Termini train station in Rome. 28 of these were ordered by ATAC in 1996; they are partial low floor trams and are the same type of trams that were ordered by Turin, Italy in 1989.

Cityway 1 tram at the Termini station in Rome

The next tram was built by Italian tram manufacturer SOCIMI, which went bankrupt during the production run.

Here's one more tram, another Cityway 2 tram.

Trams in Florence

There is one tram line in Florence. It was recently rebuilt (opening in 2010), long after it was closed in 1958. The line runs 11.5 km from Careggi, north of the main train station (Florence Santa Maria Novella), to Scandicci in southwest Florence.

I did not take any photos of this, as the only portion of the line I would have seen was right by the train station. The tram line does not go near the Duomo area, where most tourists go.

Trams in Venice

A tram in Venice, Italy

Believe it or not, there is tram service in Venice, Italy. The tram system is mostly in the mainland portion of Venice, but it does operate over the causeway to the island portion to a spot near the train station.

These are Translohr rubber-tired trams, originally developed by the French company Lohr and now built by a consortium that includes Alstom.

Although they run on rubber tires, they use a single rail to guide the tram along the route.

We did not ride these trams.

P.S. A Few Buses

A bus in Rome

Here are two photos of buses, for those who like them!

A vaporetto, aka a water bus, in Venice

That concludes my series on trains (and trams) in Italy. Thanks for reading!

See Also

• Trains in Italy (the start)
• Trains in Belgium
• Trains in Amsterdam
• Public Transit in Vienna

Trains in Italy - Venice

This post is part of a series on trains I saw and/or rode while on vacation in Italy. Start at the beginning if you like.

After a few days in Florence, it was time to move on to our final Italian stop - Venice.

Florence Station

Of course, I had to take a few photos around the train station in Florence before we left...

Lots of bustle in the Florence train station

I like the raised pantograph in this photo

En Route to Venice

Our train - a Frecciargento train

We took a Frecciargento train between Florence and Venice. Frecciargento means "silver arrow" in Italian, and these trains can reach speeds up to 250 km/hr. Zoom zoom!

My wife and I both had window seats, facing each other. I was facing backward, but that didn't really bother me. The other two seats in our little group of 4 contained two loud Russians. My wife slept much of the trip and I kept my headphones in.

I snapped a few photos along the way with my cellphone.

Meeting another Frecciargento in Bologna

I'm not sure what this structure was in Bologna - another tower, maybe - but it was impressive.

Track-straddling structure in Bologna

I spotted this EuroSprinter (Siemens ES 64) locomotive later on. It's owned by Interporto Servizi Cargo, an intermodal railway in Italy. They own their own locomotives - electric and diesel - and about a hundred well cars for carrying containers.

Interporto Servizi Cargo locomotive

I like seeing the European rolling stock - wagons - as they are very different from North American freight cars.

Empty autoracks

Check out these two different kinds of "trucks on flatcars" (TOFC):

Railway trucks on flatcars

Highway trucks on flatcars

Of course, I always have a soft spot for small diesel locomotives.

Diesels in Italy

After two hours, we were on the causeway linking Venice to the mainland. This causeway carries both road and rail traffic to the city. Transportation in Venice is by foot, or by canal. Cars and trucks arriving via this causeway can basically only drive in a small portion of the city (Santa Croce, the port area).

The Death of Venice

Cruise ships, the doom of Venice

Much has been written about how tourism is destroying Venice. The city was obviously not built for the volume of tourists that stay (4.6 million people stayed at least one night in Venice in 2016), never mind the huge number of day-trippers by bus or cruise ship. In 2015 it received 30 million visitors.

Services like Airbnb have resulted in landlords jacking up rents to force residents out, so they can sell their apartments to short-term rentals for much higher prices. This is not limited to Venice, as other cities like Barcelona have the same issue.

I don't know what the solution is. The population of Venice is shrinking, the buildings are falling apart (and sinking), and there's no end in sight. Get there while you can, before Venice turns into an unoccupied museum.

Venice's Station

The Venice train station

We stayed in a hotel near the train station - the excellent Ca' Pozzo - so we didn't have far to haul our luggage. That was good, because if you walk any distance in Venice, you're going over a bridge.

The nice thing about being near the station is that it was easy to walk over to take a few photos now and then!

Here's a few trains I saw at the train station in Venice.

Trains in the Venice station

The below two trains were interesting. Italo is a privately owned company, in direct competition with state-owned Trenitalia on the Milan-Naples and Turin-Venice routes. ÖBB is the Austrian national railway (see my Austrian railway series).

Italo and OBB trains in Venice

I liked this bilevel train too.

Bilevel train in Venice

 I ended up going to the train station two mornings to record trains.

One more train...

Something a little different

Getting Around Venice

Many boats in Venice

There are so many boats in Venice. This is to be expected, given that it's the only motorized way to get around the city, but it's still surprising to see so many of them. From vaporetti (water buses) through water taxis to gondolas, there is a lot of passenger traffic on the Grand Canal and smaller canals.

A vaporetto in Venice

These are real city buses, with schedules, electronic displays, bus passes, the whole shebang.

Vaporetto / Water bus departure board

Of course, the city needs food, water, and many other goods, and those get around in various sizes of cargo vessels.

Cargo transport in Venice

Gondolas are for tourists, not for transportation. We did take a gondola ride and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Gondolas in Venice

A Few Tourist Photos

A vaporetto passing under the Rialto bridge at night

The Rialto bridge and St. Mark's Square are well known Venice landmarks. However, I'd say the whole city is a landmark and deserves to be explored. We could honestly have spent another week in the city and not finished wandering its twisty streets and canals.

Venice from up high

I was surprised to see a Canadian connection!

A Canadian in Venice?

The most beautiful part of Venice, in our opinion, is the island of Burano. This place was picture perfect.

Burano beauty

Leaving Italy

The water bus dock at the Venice airport

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and so our visit to Italy had to end. We took a water bus from just outside our hotel to the airport. I'd say this is one of the few places in the world you can take a boat to a major airport...

After waiting in a long line to pass through Customs, we headed out to our Air Canada Rouge plane for the long flight over the Atlantic toward home.

Air Canada Rouge plane

But Wait, There's More

This isn't the end of the series, though. I have one more post to make about the trams I saw in Italy. It'll be relatively short.

Back to the start of the series

Trains in Italy - On to Florence

Panorama of Florence, Italy

This post is part of a series on trains I saw and/or rode while on vacation in Italy. Start at the beginning if you like.

Next on our itinerary after Riomaggiore was a few days in Florence, capital of the Tuscany region and the birthplace of the Renaissance. We rode the local train from Riomaggiore to La Spezia, transferring to a high speed train for the trip to Florence... after I took this selfie with another "Steve".

(CoSteve is a restaurant in Riomaggiore)

You'll notice I was wearing sunglasses there. I rarely wear sunglasses because I usually either lose them or sit on them. At least I am treating my progressive glasses a lot better than I treat sunglasses!

Anyway, here's a train we saw, at La Spezia I believe.

The train we took to Florence was bi-level. I honestly don't remember if we went up or down. I imagine we went up.

You must choose

There are electronic signs at Italian stations announcing what train is next. Note the pins sticking up to discourage pigeons from roosting and, er, fouling the signs.

Firenze SMN or bust!

Towers

There are a lot of interesting towers along the rail lines in Italy. Most look abandoned, maybe junctions that used to be controlled from here. I really like the look of the towers. They remind me of the conning towers of submarines or the islands on aircraft carriers.

Junction tower?

Here's another one.

A lot fewer windows in this tower

One more similar to the others. I like how they are similar but not the same.

PLG SHIVA BONGO indeed

This one was quite different... and covered in ivy.

This looks like some kind of bomb shelter more than anything

I loved those towers... very different than North American towers used to be!

Little Critters

Big critter, little critter

I like industrial switchers. I was fortunate to spy a few of them along the route between La Spezia and Florence. Note the two above - one much bigger than the other!

Little yellow diesel

 These little critters probably don't pull much, but they'd be perfect for maintenance of way work!

Another little yellow diesel

Here's an older but larger diesel I spotted through the window as we rolled along. It looks a bit like the German DB Class V 200 locomotives. Indeed, 13 were sold to various small Italian railway operators.

A CLF locomotive in Italy

If you squint really hard, and have the original photo, you would see that the blue logo on the side is "CLF". This stands for Costruzioni Linee Ferroviarie, which I think is a subsidiary of Strukton Rail.

More Trains

All that Jazz

Here's another ETR-25 "Jazz" trainset, built by Alstom.

I really liked the next train. It looks fast.

Frecciarossa ETR 500

This is the Frecciarossa trainset, pride of the Italian fleet, capable of reaching speeds of 300 km/hr.

There are actually two different Frecciarossa styles, the ETR 1000 and the ETR 500. The ETR 1000 is newer, capable of 400 km/hr. It has four classes of service onboard, power at every seat, onboard wifi with Internet... a pretty sweet way to travel.

The ETR 500 has similar capabilities, but can "only" reach 300 km/hr. In reality, both classes only reach 300 km/hr as that is the practical speed limit on the Italian railway network.

Below, an ETR 1000 at the Firenze Rifredi station. There are four train stations in Florence, with the Santa Maria Novella (S.M.N.) being the main station.

Frecciarossa 1000 at the Firenze Rifredi station

Just to break things up, here's a more conventional train. I like those blue doors.

Colourful coaches

Your standard loco-hauled train

Back to the high speed trains for a moment, a Frecciarossa ETR 500 coming into the Firenze S.M.N. station. We were also coming into the station to end our trip from La Spezia to Florence.

Frecciarossa ETR 500 at the main Florence train station

Yet another "464" class locomotive - the SD40-2 of the Italian railway system. ;)

Another Italian 464 class locomotive

Italian track bumpers

I liked these track bumpers - very different than the North American variant, due to the different bumpers on the end of rail cars. In North America, the couplers are the only contact point between cars, whereas European cars have spring loaded buffers and chain couplers.

In Florence

Oh David, you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind hey David, hey David.

Again, this isn't a travel blog, but I'll include a few photos from Florence to give a taste of the area. Michelangelo's "David" is of course a highlight of Florence. I hadn't realized the statue was so big - it's 17 feet tall.

There was a giant toy store a few doors down from our hotel. This store, Dreoni, was founded in 1923 and has a large presence in the city block. I was particularly interested in the model train section, of course.

Check out that Bachmann CP Rail grain hopper in the middle!

Finally, here's a selfie in front of the "Duomo" (Duomo di Firenze, aka the Cathedral of Florence or Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore). The cathedral, with Giotto's bell tower beside it and the Baptistery of Saint John in front of it, is a major tourist attraction. Its dome was the largest in the world for some time, and remains the largest brick dome in the world. You can see a photo of the dome at the top of this post, taken from the bell tower.

Me and the Duomo

So that was Florence. After a few days, we boarded yet another train and headed for our final stop in our Italian tour - Venice.

Back to the beginning / On to Venice