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

Action in Downtown Fargo

After my little reconnaissance mission in Fargo, I was able to head out for a few hours in the morning of May 12 to see some trains. I got up at pretty much the crack of dawn and left the hotel (the Hilton Garden Inn, a very nice place) to head downtown. I saw the grand Northern Pacific depot and decided to take some photos there. As you can see, the shadows on the caboose and display train were a bit long at 06:50!


Apparently this caboose was Great Northern X227. It used to have a Great Northern logo on it but not at this time.

I heard some train horns so I decided to try to get a shot of a train with the depot in the background. Soon I saw an eastbound freight approaching, but it stopped by McDonald's and waited.


The reason became obvious when a fast westbound intermodal came around the corner. This baby had five engines on the head end, led by Dash-9 BNSF 5122.


Within five minutes, the train was gone and BNSF 6222 was on its way.


BNSF 9071 was pushing on the rear of the coal train.


After those two trains passed, I wandered around the depot, taking a few photos.

Soon enough another train came rolling in, only to stop by the McDonald's.


Note the trailers on this intermodal train.

The BNSF Twin Cities division headquarters is right there too, and it looks like they did a crew change.


Soon enough, BNSF 4920 was on its way past the depot.


Here's a shot of a couple of UPS trailers of differing sizes.


Trailers on flat cars (TOFC) are quite common on BNSF through Fargo, whereas they are a rarity in Canada with only a few holdouts like the Hudson Bay Railway between Thompson and Churchill. I think CN and CP consciously got out of the trailer business several years ago, although blog partner Trackside Treasure notes they were in the business for several decades. I photographed UPS, FedEx, TIP Intermodal, Roadway, YRC Worldwide, Clipper, HMD, and Alliance Shippers trailers.

All of that action took place in less than an hour. After those three trains, I headed east into Minnesota to the Dilworth yard to see what was up..

Read on!

The Canadian and the Hudson Bay

I shot a "twofer" of passenger trains early this week. The first was the Canadian on Monday. I decided to head to Waverley Street to shoot it, given the mild weather. It's no fun to stand there in -30C temperatures, believe me. I parked and started jogging to the tracks. Just as I arrived, I saw the Canadian and the crossing lights came on. I barely had time to get my camera out! I guess they made very good time from the station.

Consist

On Tuesday I went up to Waverley a few minutes earlier to ensure I had time to set up. As I parked an eastbound CN freight was rolling through the crossing with CN 8852 and CN 8869 for power. I think it must have been CN 114, given the time and the mixed freight on the head end followed by containers. One unusual thing in the consist was a few trailers on flat cars (TOFC), something you don't see very often these days.


The Hudson Bay (VIA 693) was very prompt on Tuesday.

Consist

It's great to be in a city with two passenger trains... especially when both have the stainless steel cars. :)

The end of TOFC on NB Southern

I should have mentioned this earlier.. NB Southern Railway ceased to run truck trailers on flat cars (TOFC) about 3 weeks ago. I'm told the last of the flatcars made their run (empty) back to Saint John yesterday and will be sold off. The service was apparently unprofitable, especially due to the byzantine Customs regulations on the U.S. side. It's a shame. When they were first introduced in late 2003 a separate TOFC-only train was run. That was terminated in 2005 and the TOFC were tacked onto the end of the regular trains. It was not uncommon to see 15-20 trailers per train at the peak.

R.I.P. TOFC

On a related note, I believe I posted earlier that NB Southern 2317 and 2319 (the two yellow units) will be repainted to green. I'm told the Sunbury logos have been removed from at least one of them. Here's where they were.

There was a rumour that the units had been "returned" to NB Southern from Sunbury. In truth they were always owned by Eastern Maine Railroad, a subsidiary of NB Southern.

Saint John sightings 2006/03/25

I returned to Saint John on Saturday with my daughter to do some shopping, and of course to do some railfanning.

When I arrived at about 12:15, I quickly found out that the yard switcher pair CN 7000/7010 had split a switch and the front truck of 7010 was off the track.

Several people examine the front truck.

I ventured down the yard to find CN 7015 bringing six trailers-on-flat-cars (TOFC) to the piggyback ramp (NBSR 687331, 687370, 687317, 687315, 687430). The very friendly brakeman was the one who told me about 7010's misadventure. The trailers were apparently empties, and soon afterward I saw a tractor pulling them off to replace them with trailers full of fish from Connors Brothers.


Lauren and I went into Tim Horton's to have lunch, and the crew of 7015 came in for coffee shortly afterward.

Soon afterward 7015 ran light to Tim Horton's. What's more Canadian than CN and Tim Horton's?


I returned to the main Island Yard to find CN 7000 and 7010 bringing a local to the Irving Refinery and Irving Paper at 13:12. I guess 7010's problem wasn't very serious!

7000 and 7010 pushed 13 tank cars and 7 boxcars.

At the east end of the yard, I found the NB Southern transfer freight waiting to get into the yard at 14:00. They had a mixed bag of NBSR 3702 (SW1200RS), NBSR 3701 (GP9), and NBSR 2317 (GP38-3) for power.



The friendly crew invited us into the cab of 3702 and we chatted for a while.


We took a break from railfanning after that and did some shopping, then went out to Rothesay to visit the model train store. On our return, we found CN 305 was getting ready to go. I chatted with the carman and we went up to the head end of 305 to give them a roll-by. They left at 16:30 with 81 cars, a mixed bag of boxcars, tank cars, and about 20 doublestacks. Apparently they were delayed by three bad-order boxcars and of course 7010's problem. CN 2430 led 2666 and 5702.


We headed home after that. It was a great day!