FS Treni Turistici Italiani, the specialist company created in 2023 to develop Italy’s tourist, historic and religious train services, is being wound down after accumulating heavy losses. Its activities and rolling stock are being redistributed within the FS Group, while regions across Italy continue to expand heritage train programmes.
Italy‘s experiment with a dedicated company for tourist trains is coming to an end, just three years after it began.
FS Treni Turistici Italiani (FS TTI), created by the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane group in 2023 to develop a new market for tourist and heritage rail travel, is being reorganised following substantial financial losses. According to information reported by Il Sole 24 Ore and subsequently reflected in the company’s Wikipedia entry, the closure of the company was approved on 30 June 2026, with its personnel and rolling stock being transferred to Trenitalia and Fondazione FS Italiane.
The change does not mean that Italy’s tourist trains are disappearing. Quite the opposite: FS continues to promote a substantial programme of tourist and historic journeys, while regional governments are investing in heritage services designed to bring visitors to cities, villages, archaeological sites, museums and rural areas.
The restructuring instead reflects a reassessment of who should operate these services and how their value should be measured.
From ambitious new business to restructuring
FS Treni Turistici Italiani was presented by the FS Group in July 2023 as a new company dedicated to high-quality, sustainable tourism by rail. Its objective was to create trains specifically designed around the needs of tourists, combining travel with local culture, landscapes, food and wine and railway heritage.
The company subsequently developed a range of services under the Espresso brand, including overnight and daytime tourist trains.
Among its best-known projects have been the Espresso Cadore, Espresso Riviera, Espresso Versilia, Espresso Assisi, and Espresso Langhe-Monferrato, as well as themed services such as the Milan–Alba Tartufo e Vino journey.
The company’s own account of its first year illustrates the scale of the initial operation. It says that more than 600 trains operated in its first year, carrying more than 40,000 passengers across historic, tourist and charter services.
But passenger numbers alone did not make the business financially sustainable.
More passengers, but persistent losses
The financial performance became the central problem.
The analysis behind the restructuring found that historic and religious services have a structurally negative relationship between revenues and costs. The wider market for tourist railway services also remains relatively immature, requiring substantial investment while potentially taking too long to generate a return.
According to the figures reported by Il Sole 24 Ore, FS TTI carried around 40,000 passengers in its first year on more than 600 trains but ended 2023 with a loss of approximately €2.2 million.
The losses subsequently grew. By the end of 2024, the accumulated deficit had reached around €14.7 million. Revenue then almost doubled in 2025 to approximately €19 million, partly helped by the launch of the La Dolce Vita luxury train project with Arsenale.
That increase was not enough to restore the business to profitability, however. The accumulated losses subsequently exceeded €45 million, according to the financial information cited by Il Sole 24 Ore.
The group’s industrial planning therefore concluded that the existing structure could not guarantee positive margins and cash flows. The plan identified structural losses of around €10 million a year and annual financial requirements of approximately €12.8 million.
The response has been to stop treating all tourist railway activities as one commercial business.
Tourism moves towards Trenitalia
Under the reorganisation, the commercially oriented tourism business is being transferred into Trenitalia.
The reasoning is that tourist services can make better use of Trenitalia’s existing rolling stock, crews and operational resources instead of maintaining a separate structure.
The restructuring could involve the transfer of around 200 coaches and locomotives and approximately 30 employees.
The intention is to reduce structural losses by making better use of rolling stock and staff while creating operational and industrial synergies with the much larger national passenger railway operator.
This marks a significant change from the original concept. Instead of building a separate company from scratch to develop tourist rail travel, FS will increasingly integrate the commercially viable elements into its existing railway operation.
Historic trains have a different purpose
The other major part of the restructuring concerns historic and religious/charter services.
These activities could be allocated to Fondazione FS Italiane, which already has responsibility for preserving and promoting the historical railway heritage of the FS Group.
The foundation was established in 2013 and looks after a collection of around 400 historic railway vehicles, as well as railway archives, museums and heritage lines.
It also has extensive experience in operating heritage journeys. Before FS Treni Turistici Italiani was created, Fondazione FS was already running trips with historic rolling stock, carrying around 100,000 passengers on approximately 460 itineraries in 2019.
The distinction is important because historic trains do not necessarily need to be judged solely by their ability to make a commercial profit.
They can preserve railway heritage, promote destinations, generate publicity for the FS brand and stimulate tourism in areas that might otherwise receive fewer visitors.
The restructuring therefore separates the commercial tourism function from the heritage and cultural function.
The trains themselves are not disappearing
The continued activity of the FS tourist railway operation is particularly visible on the official FS Treni Turistici Italiani website.
The company continues to market a mixture of historic and tourist experiences, including the Langhe, Roero and Monferrato Railway using Centoporte carriages, the Railway of Wonders, the Milan–Alba Truffles and Wine journey and the Palazzolo–Paratico service using panoramic carriages.
The website also shows a substantial programme of regional historic train services.
For 2026, for example, the site highlights more than 20 historic itineraries in Lombardy, all departing from Milan, while Friuli-Venezia Giulia has its own programme of historic trains combining railway heritage with local destinations and landscapes.
The offer extends beyond one-day excursions. FS Treni Turistici Italiani also markets first- and second-class accommodation, lounges, sleeping cars and four- and six-berth couchettes for its night services.
In other words, the corporate structure is changing, but the underlying concept of railway tourism remains very much alive.
Campania sees historic trains as a tourism tool
One of the clearest examples comes from Campania, where historic trains are being used deliberately as part of regional tourism policy.
From September, the region is planning more than 30 historic train services at weekends between 6 September and 27 December. The programme is designed to promote slower, accessible tourism and to connect visitors with Campania’s cultural and railway heritage.
The programme includes the Archeotreno, linking Naples with the archaeological areas of Pompeii and Paestum; the Reggia Express, running from Napoli Centrale to Caserta; and the Pietrarsa Express, connecting central Naples with the National Railway Museum at Pietrarsa.
There will also be services from Avellino along the historic Irpinia railway towards Montella, Lioni, Montemarano, Paternopoli, Taurasi, Cassano Irpino and Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi.
These services demonstrate why railway tourism can have value even when ticket revenue alone does not justify the operation.
A historic train can turn the journey itself into a tourist attraction while also bringing visitors to destinations away from the major tourist centres.
Trains plus buses to reach smaller towns
The Campania programme also illustrates the importance of integrating historic trains with other forms of transport.
At destinations along the Irpinia routes, shuttle buses will connect railway stations with nearby towns and villages. The idea is to make it easier for passengers to continue their journey after leaving the historic train.
This creates a tourism chain in which the railway is not merely a nostalgic attraction but part of a wider mobility system.
For regional tourism authorities, such services can help spread visitors beyond Naples, Pompeii and the other most heavily visited destinations.
A model being replicated across Italy
Campania is far from alone.
The official FS Treni Turistici Italiani website currently lists regional programmes in several parts of Italy, while Fondazione FS promotes its own Binari senza Tempo network of historic routes. The foundation describes itself as the custodian of the FS Group’s historic railway heritage, including around 400 historic vehicles, museums and railway lines that have been recovered for tourism.
Among the services promoted by Fondazione FS are the Sebino Express, Treno Natura in Tuscany, Sannio Express, Archeotreno Campania, Pietrarsa Express, Reggia Express and Irpinia Express.
In July and August 2026, for example, Fondazione FS is operating the historic Railway of Wonders service along the spectacular Cuneo–Ventimiglia line between the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea. The journey links Turin, Cuneo, Limone Piemonte, Tende, Breil-sur-Roya, Ventimiglia, and Imperia, with the railway itself presented as part of the tourist experience.
The service combines the historic railway journey with food and wine experiences, further demonstrating the shift towards selling an overall tourism experience rather than simply a train ride.
Why the original business model struggled
The fate of FS TTI highlights a broader problem for tourist railways.
Historic trains are expensive to operate. Their vehicles require specialist maintenance, crews need particular expertise and many services operate only on selected days or during particular seasons.
At the same time, passengers often expect a tourist train to offer something substantially different from a normal railway journey. That can mean heritage vehicles, catering, entertainment, panoramic views, luggage facilities, excursions, and connections with local attractions.
All of those elements add costs.
The commercial problem is therefore that the most attractive tourist train may not necessarily be the most profitable train.
The FS analysis reportedly concluded that historic and religious services were structurally loss-making, while the wider tourist railway market required investment and had return times that were considered unsustainable.
That does not necessarily mean that the services themselves have no value. It means that their value cannot always be captured through the train ticket.
From transport business to tourism infrastructure
This is where the role of Fondazione FS becomes particularly important.
A historic train can function as a moving museum, a tourism advertisement, a cultural attraction and a way of promoting a region. The railway can also help revive lines and stations that have little relevance to conventional passenger services.
Italy has explicitly recognised the tourism potential of railway heritage. Its legal framework protects disused, suspended and abandoned railway lines of particular cultural, landscape and tourism value and allows them to be used for tourist railway operations.
That creates a much broader ecosystem around heritage railways than simply operating old trains.
The end of the company, not the end of the trains
The closure of FS Treni Turistici Italiani therefore represents a change in strategy rather than an abandonment of Italy’s railway tourism ambitions.
The dedicated company was launched in 2023 on the assumption that a growing market for sustainable and experience-based travel could support a commercially viable tourist railway business.
Three years later, FS appears to have reached a different conclusion: some parts of that business can be integrated into Trenitalia, while others make more sense as heritage and tourism activities within Fondazione FS.
The contrast is striking. The company created specifically to develop Italy’s tourist trains has accumulated losses severe enough to be wound down, yet the FS Group is simultaneously continuing to promote historic trains, regional programmes and themed tourist journeys.
The likely future is therefore not fewer tourist trains, but a different organisational model.
Commercially viable tourist services can be operated alongside Trenitalia’s normal resources, while heritage trains can be managed as part of the FS Group’s cultural and tourism mission. Regional governments, meanwhile, can continue to support services when they deliver wider benefits for destinations and local tourism.
For passengers, the practical result may be surprisingly little change. The names of the companies behind the trains may change, but the Centoporte carriages, panoramic coaches, historic routes and themed journeys are likely to remain part of Italy’s railway landscape.
And that may ultimately be the lesson of the FS TTI experiment: Italy appears to have concluded that tourist trains are valuable; just not necessarily as a standalone railway business.
