E-tickets (ticketless travel) on Italian rail

There's a novelty on Italian rail that might be useful for travellers
who don't live in Italy. You can now buy your tickets for Eurostar
Italia trains online at www.trenitalia.it and travel without a ticket.
The conductor has a little palm computer that will have your name and
the seat you reserved and you just have to show him a valid ID (your
passport). For safety, I would print out the confirmation page and
carry it with me.

This service seems to be available only on the Italian-language
version of the website, but there doesn't seem to be any restriction
on where you live.

In order to buy the tickets, you have to register with the trenitalia
site, but you no longer need an Italian tax number to do so. You need
to give a valid email address, where your password will be sent, and
make sure that the tickets are reserved in the name as it appears on
the ID of the person who will be making the trip. The same name must
appear on the credit card that's used to make the purchase.

I recently got two tickets to Rome this way. I had reserved them in my
husband's name, only to find out that I couldn't use my own credit
card. No problem, I used his. When we got to the station, just to be
sure I didn't need any ticket, I showed the ticket agent the
confirmation page I had printed. He had never seen a "ticketless
travel" page before and was really a bit puzzled by it. On the one
hand, his computer didn't have the seats listed as awaiting ticket
pickup. On the other hand, he hadn't heard that one could travel
without a ticket. He suggested that we try to get a ticket from the
ticket machine, using the confirmation code.

The ticket machine gave us a ticket, so we thought that maybe the
ticketless travel idea was a mistake on my part. On the train,
however, the conductor confirmed that ticketless travel was indeed a
reality. However, our name didn't appear on his palm computer. We
assume that it's because we got a physical ticket, thus cancelling our
name from the ticketless list.

Note that this mode of buying tickets only works on Eurostar trains,
which have all-reserved seats.

On another topic, I noticed that the trains were rather full when we
were travelling. We went to Rome (on the Rome-Ancona line) on a Friday
afternoon and returned on Monday morning. I had no trouble getting the
Friday tickets just a few hours before the trip (online), but the
train was pretty full when we travelled. We bought the Monday tickets
from a ticket machine in Termini station on Sunday afternoon, and
already we couldn't get two seats together in 2nd class for Monday
morning. The machine doesn't warn you of these little inconveniences,
it just gives you a ticket that doesn't match your request. We got two
seats near each other, and I traded with the person in the seat next
to my husband.

Another new feature is that all Eurostar trains, as of today, are 100%
nonsmoking. Intercity trains have been nonsmoking for a while. I
believe that only the expresso trains (very slow and stopping at
nearly every station) have smoking cars now. On some lines, there are
hardly any such trains.
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Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

Another new feature...

Terrific information--thanks Barbara!