Training through Italy

The Italian rail network is excellent, it isn't cheap but it is efficient - we just don't have such a network throughout Australia, I wish we did. Sure, the Indian Pacific travels from one side of the country to the other, joining two oceans.

The Ghan travels up through the centre of the nation from Adelaide to Alice Springs, the Prospector runs from Kalgoorlie to Perth and the Australind runs from Bunbury to Perth. These rail journeys are more for the experience that viable transport alternatives instead attracting retirees and international tourists.

However, the frequency of the network is the issue - they just don't move the volumes of people the Italian rail system services. The preferred transport option is air travel and bus, once freight was transported by rail, now many of the tracks have been ripped up or left in such a state of disrepair, they are unusable in their current form. Trains throughout Europe all run on electricity, apart from the city trains, the rest use diesel locomotives.

In many towns and cities, the rail terminal is the central feature of the town, even somewhere like Florence, the train station is central to the city, so too Rome and Milan. I am sitting alongside a young and very attractive Italian woman heading to Venice, I am feeling pretty good about Italian trains.