European Railroad Discussion > High-speed Passenger Trains in Italy

Here is a collection of the Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) high-speed passenger trains that I photographed, and in three cases, rode.

1. This was the first case of not being able to access the platforms at Venice so I could not get to the sunny side. I asked to pop in for a photo and was denied. Not sure why this body style does not have a 'clean' nose.

2. The following day we left Venice and with brief platform access I got this shot of my train to Florence. That is a nice looking modern passenger train.

3. Another view of the nose of the 'duck bill' body style. I only saw two of these, both in Venice.

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4. And a view from the other side. This is an ETR700 while the train in image #2 is an ETR1000 (evidently also known as an ETR400).

5. Treno Italo is a private competitor in the high-speed arena and is said to have a 35% market share. I tended to see one of these trains at every major station but this is the only one I managed to get an image of. I either did not have access or the train would depart before I could get to it. 'ntv' on the nose stands for Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (new passenger transport) and the trainset was built by Alstom.

6. Likely my train from Rome to Naples on a day that there was a rail "strike." This is a third body style and the only one of this style that I saw, an ETR500.

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7. A northbound Frecciarossa ETR1000 arrives at Salerno. The ETR1000s were by far the most common.

8. Two northbound Frecciarossa ETR1000s making their stops at the station in Salerno.

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NMlurker Wrote in part:
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>  Not sure why this body style does
> not have a 'clean' nose.
>
> 
From the https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/frecciarossa.htm#frecciarossa-700Frecciarossa 700

Look at that cute puppy-dog nose!  These ETR700 trains were built in Italy for the ill-fated Fyra services between Amsterdam & Brussels.  Returned to Italy in disgrace, they've been repurposed for Frecciarossa services and are mainly used on the Turin - Milan - Verona - Venice route.  The direct Rome-Trieste Frecciarossa is also a Frecciarossa 700.


We rode a -700 from Milan to Venice last summer; the interior is not a polished as the other classes.
WP17



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/25 16:35 by WP17.

The ETR 700 were appropriately named "Albatross"
(in Dutch of course) when they were bought by NS
(Nederland Spoorweg). Little did NS know how 
appropriate the name was. They never operated in
revenue service and were sent back to AnsaldoBreda
in Italy. To avoid Ansaldo going bankrupt the Italian
government bought 16 of the original 19 for
Trenitalia, the other three had been used in testing
on NS and were in poor condition.