Chaos grips Italian rail network as Rome’s hubs wake up to blackout

Travellers in Italy are facing another nightmare day after Rome’s two largest train stations woke up in complete paralysis.

Trains failed to depart from both Rome’s Termini and Tiburtina stations, the two biggest railway hubs of the Italian capital, causing huge delays and cancellations across much of the country’s railways.

The chaos began at around 6.30am local time when an unspecified “failure” hit the segment between the two stations.

To make matters worse, departure boards at the stations went completely black, leaving hundreds of passengers clueless and raising fears of a cyberattack.

“Simply put, you don’t know from which platform your train is leaving,” one traveller posted on X. “But you can always board a random one, you might be lucky.”

Another said he had been stuck on a platform for an hour and a half.

“The staff doesn’t know anymore what to tell us,” he wrote. “They’ve cancelled dozens of trains. It will take hours, if not days to go back to normal. It’s a collapse!”

National operator Trenitalia said train traffic remains “heavily disrupted” and is advising travellers to reschedule their trips.

At least 22 high-speed and intercity routes have been shut down, and 14 have been partially cancelled. The disruption is affecting major corridors including Naples-Milan, Rome-Naples, Rome-Milan, Milan-Salerno, Florence-Rome and Rome-Turin.

Other trains are facing delays of between 60 and 180 minutes.

Trenitalia has published the list of cancelled or partially cancelled trains here.

Since June, Rome has already been hit with at least five days of severe travel chaos.

The latest miserable day for Italian travellers immediately follows another day of disruptions: on Tuesday, flights from Milan’s Bergamo airport were cancelled after a Ryanair plane became stuck on the runway due to a tyre blow-up during landing operations.