As a waiter pours me a glass of Fiulot Barbera red wine, grown in Italy ’s Piedmont region, and hands me a plate of pasta, I put aside any irritation that the Espresso Langhe Monferrato sleeper service departed Rome an hour late. I’m in the dining carriage of a service run by Treni Turistici Italiani (TTI) – a division of Italy’s state-owned railway company, Trenitalia. The brand launched earlier this year and operates tourist trains across the country using restored carriages from the 1960s that would have otherwise been languishing in storage.
Trenitalia spent €14m (£11.6m) to revive 17 carriages for the 50 or so services it has run so far in 2024. The project is part of an effort by the Italian government to encourage more tourists to travel by rail.
The train I’m on has a capacity to hold around 200 passengers and tickets are reasonably priced. The typical fare is €249 (£207) one way for solo occupancy of a sleeper berth on the 12-hour journey. As it stands, there’s also a special 50 per cent discount fare of €124 (£103) for tickets bought more than 48 hours before departure.
Shared couchettes are also available. Prices start from €56 (£47) when sharing with up to five people and €66 (£55) when sharing with three. By way of comparison, a bed in single-bed sleeper on the European Sleeper from Brussels to Prague starts from €159 (£132), but this doesn’t include dinner.
TTI’s focus on food is also unusual among sleeper services, and there’.
