I thought you might be interested to inform your readers that they now have to stamp their tickets at a yellow machine at the railway stations in Italy before boarding the train.

My husband and I did not know this, having travelled from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Pisa, Lucca and Assisi and then back to Venice in 2005 when it was not necessary, and boarded a train from Padua to Verona.

There were no notices informing us of the change in procedure at the station at Padua and the clerk did not tell us (certainly no notices in in English). As a result when the inspector came around on the train he fined us 50E which I am now trying to retrieve from Trenitalia and having great difficulty.

We went to the Customer Services Department at Venice Maestro Station, where we were told and that as visitors to the country we should have gone to the Customer Service Department before boarding the train. Fine, but as it was we wasted three quarters of an hour finding customer services and waiting to be served, let alone doing this on every occasion one travels abroad.

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The Customer Services lady who was very abrupt and dogmatic said there were notices on the noticeboards but after looking for five minutes she could only find a very small notice in English

Most of the clerks at the railway satations have some knowledge of English but did not point this out to us either verbally or via a notice on their desk which would have been helpful.

I would like to take this matter further with Trenitalia but do not have an address in Rome to post a letter and copies of the relevant receipt etc. Would you be able to help me with this matter? Jennie Willcox, by email

Times Online rail expert Alan Heywood responds: Without knowing what kind of tickets Mr and Mrs Willcox were using in 2005, this one is a little difficult to answer.

The endorsing of tickets in the yellow machines has been a fact of life in Italy, as it has been in France and Belgium, for very many years. However, what has changed is that the old handwritten tickets once issued in other countries used to be exempt (because there was no physical way of inserting a flimsy ticket into a machine).

Nowadays, all tickets are computer printed on thin card and this exemption no longer applies except for rail passes such as Inter Rail.

Many agencies in the UK were changing over to the new system around 2005 and it is therefore possible that Mr and Mrs Willcox travelled on the old style tickets last time - or perhaps they travelled on new style tickets and the conductor was less vigilant!

On this occasion they obviously bought a ticket at the station and, because the endorsing system isn't new, the clerk wouldn't think to mention it.

My advice to everybody would be to endorse their tickets before any journey where they see the little yellow or orange machines but ONLY just before the journey. The purpose of the endorsement is that, on busy trains where a conductor may not get round to checking all passengers, it serves the same purpose as the conductor's punch. In other words, once endorsed, the ticket is regarded as used. If you endorse it too early (say, the day before), the conductor might think you are making a second journey on yesterday's ticket.

It would be worth mentioning that, in some countries where the universal endorsement doesn't apply, it may be in force on some commuter journeys or where the train has no conductor. Switzerland is a good example of this where many local trains are one-person operated - that is, they only have a driver.

If all this is very confusing, my last piece of advice is, if in doubt, endorse your ticket - it can't be wrong to do this, even when not necessary. Also, be aware that the same system operates on city buses in many countries where tickets are bought from a machine.

Alan Heywood is a director at rail specialists, Ffestiniog Travel

Got a question for Alan? Email us at yoursay@timesonline.co.uk

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