The romance of sleeper train travel in Italy has taken on a distinctly Wild West edge as a new breed of Butch Cassidy outlaws target night trains for stick-ups.
Devotees of continental couchette culture who expect to be woken up at their destination by a polite porter bearing a cappuccino are increasingly startled to find the porter beaten and bleeding and their luggage missing.
"Italian sneak thieves have always operated on the trains here, but this is a new generation of eastern Europeans who go armed with knives and stab and lock up the guard when challenged," said Dario Balotta, transport secretary for the Confederation of Italian Workers' Trade Unions (CISL) in Lombardy.
The modus operandi of the gangs owes much to the memories of the cowboy bandits of Hollywood fame.
Three to four men pose as passengers to board the trains, which are often heading south from Milan, subdue the guard, rob the couchettes and then pull the emergency cord to enable them to jump off and be picked up by accomplices in the countryside.
Last year there were 29 such robberies, up from eight in 2005 and only four in 2004. One night journey in December even witnessed a brawl between two rival gangs over the right to rob the train they had boarded.
"Transport police used to ride the trains, but their numbers have been cut and the thieves are getting more confident," Balotta said. "We need better alarms for staff and the police back on board."
In one instance a guard was pinned down, punched and stabbed in the face before the gangs calmly slipped the locks on the cabin doors and pilfered from the sleeping passengers. Narcotic spray is sometimes used to keep their prey snoring, Balotta said.
The majority of the heists are carried out on the long overnight journeys between Milan and Sicilian towns like Palermo and Syracuse.
After the trains pass Rome on the south-bound leg down the Italian peninsula, the gangs go into action at about 3am, hopping off with their loot at small stations before the trains finally lumber onto the ferries which take them the short distance over the Strait of Messina to Sicily.
With 10 raids already staged this year, the CISL union has warned it is a matter of time before a guard -- or one of the many middle-aged and elderly passengers that prefer couchettes to flying in Italy -- is seriously hurt by the robbers.
An Italian transport police official told Corriere della Sera that more men would now be put on board trains, with the aim of bringing the gangs to justice this year.
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