Passengers were warned to expect cancellations and delays as a second round of maintenance began at Florence's Santa Maria Novella station, cutting rail traffic through the city by about 50 percent until Thursday 30 July, according to the network operator RFI.
Some lines were served by a shuttle bus between Santa Maria Novella and Campo di Marte, which RFI said would add around 90 minutes to a journey. Long distance services on the Tyrrhenian line were kept running at two trains an hour on the Rome to Milan and Turin route, with delays of about two and a half hours expected.
Italian media described the country as split in two, which is less hyperbole than geography. Florence is the pinch point of the high speed network: almost everything travelling between the north and the south passes through it, so a local engineering job becomes a national timetable problem.
The works themselves are not the failure. Replacing a 140 year old overpass is exactly the kind of maintenance that gets deferred until it cannot be. What the week exposes is the absence of a redundant route around the hub, which is a decision taken over decades rather than a scheduling error made this summer.