I found the trains in italy very easy. My parents and I took trains from Venice to Florence and then on to Rome. I have also take a few shorter journeys around Florence (to Pisa and to the outlet mall nearby). The longer journeys obviously don't leave as frequently, but they have reserved seats and are easy to locate the trains in the big stations. The more local trains, run much more frequently and can be a little more difficult to figure out which one goes where, but they are still easy enough. If I remember correctly the little ticket machines could be used in English, so made it easy if you knew what you were doing. But there were also ticket windows.
