QUOTE (ben100 @ 28 May 2008, 18:06)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>Amazing link!
I didn't know that the Italians had a "Pendelino" as such!
I am also planning a holiday to Hungary and will be going past Slovenia. Are the any intersting trains to look out for?
I might also go to vienna during the trip, do you know of any intersting stations or trains there?
Regards,
Ben
Yes,
www.railfaneurope.net is a very good website, it has stocklists and archives of pictures of almost everything if you care to look! Very useful and in English too.
I haven't been to Vienna for a few years but all the big stations are terminus ones currently - so plenty of motive power will be sitting on adjacent tracks and easier to get to than in a through-station. The Viennese are building/about to start on a huge new central station that will replace some of these and speed up connections through Vienna.
You could try the Austrian Railways Group website, they often have useful information about museums/where depots are or places to catch plenty of interesting trains.
Regarding Hungary, MAV have a wide mix of rolling stock - some Taurus locomotives but plenty of Eastern european designs shared with the ex-communist neighbours, see RailFanEurope!! If you stay at the big cities then there will be international trains from Austria, Germany, Czech Republic etc. but it depends what you are looking for.
I'm sorry I'm not much help but I haven't been train hunting in that part of Europe, although I am going later this year, so ask me again in four months time?!
NOW if you were going to Italy, Tuscany in particular then I would recommend Florence as a great place to see Eurostar Italia trains!! Another large terminus station (Santa Maria Novella - SMN) with about 14 platforms, but the trick is to get off the train one station before, at Firenze Rifredi, which is about five minutes before, because every train from SMN and from some other diverging lines including freight passes through here and the trains are actually moving instead of being stationary as at the terminus SMN. Plenty of tourists get off here by accident too, not realising it is one stop further to the centre of Florence! This entertains the Italians!
Santa Maria Novella is a superb early modernist station - the feeling of space in the always busy atrium is super and the design is very efficient for connecting to buses. A pleasure to travel into/out of.