Travelling by Train in Italy

We made a couple of rookie mistakes on our February trip to Italy. Our only recent with trains in Europe was when we took a train from London to Glasgow last summer. I booked not just the train we would take, but also the actual seats we would sit in before we left home. The train was on time, we had comfortable seats that had wireless access and power points, and there was frequent food and beverage service throughout the trip. The same could not be said of Italian train service. We arrived in Florence last in the afternoon and were planning to travel to Orvieto the next day. In an effort to avoid problems, we made our way to the train station that night and bought round trip tickets from a machine that was track-side. We were falsely reassured by this, it turns out. The next morning we arrived in good time to make our train, only to find out that it was cancelled. And it had been cancelled for some time. Why, we asked, were both the web site and the self-service train ticket machines not up to date? Unknown. Our return train was also cancelled. But not to worry, there was a regional train that was on almost the same schedule, at half the price. It was comfortable and more or less on time. So all's well that ends well, but I would recommend going to the station and getting the train they have, not necessarily the train you planned on.