The FS InterCity named train "Archimede" ran from Rome to Villa San Giovanni. It was them split up and shunted onto Messina train ferry and shipped to Sicily. At Messina Centrale, the train was reassembled in two parts, one going to Palermo and one to Siracusa.

Here is a video of the train running on the Italian mainland in 1995, with one of the last unrebuilt E444 Tartaruga locos hauling it.
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In this video, I have recreated this train fairly accurately.
It is hauled by my Lima E444.095 (cat no 208231LP). This is a limited edition of 1000 produced in 1992. I picked it up from someone in Rome who was selling it on eBay. It was missing buffers and skirts, but these parts are the same as Rivarossi spares still available, so it was not problem to fix. I was particularly keen to get my hands on this loco, as it does not have the beading between the blue and grey paint, which were removed in the eighties and nineties. I have two newer Riva locos, but they have the beading, so are only good up to the mid 1980s. As this loco is one that will be thrashed with heavy loads, I bought it a new motor. This was a modern motor for a Riva E402b I picked up on eBay for £11 (bargain!)- it needed a bit of tweaking to fit, as it was a couple of mm longer than the original, and also had deeper slots in the flywheels than the original. The original motor (which was OK, but a bit weak for load 12 expresses) was retired to my spares box!

The rest of the train consists of:
Lima/Riva UIC-Z 2nd class bandiera; Roco Gran Confort 1st series 1st class bandiera (it is a sub as it should be a corridor and I have used a saloon, as I wanted the flat roof); Lima/Riva UIC-Z 1st class bi-grigio; Lima/Riva UIC-Z 2nd class bi-grigio; Roco Eurofima 2nd class C1; Lima/Riva UIC-Z 2nd class bandiera; really fancy Safer/Euroscale brass Self Service restaurant; Lima/Riva UIC-Z 1st class bi-grigio; ACME UIC-Z BH 2nd class bi-grigio; and two Lima/Riva UIC-Z 2nd class bandieras at the rear. The last coach started off in bi-grigio colours, but it is possible to do a clever partial repaint to get it into the harder to find bandiera colours!

This train is accompanied by rake of my FS railcars on a regionale. At the back is a powered Riva Aln663. Next is a dummy Aln663. It the front is a dummy Lima Expert Aln 668 (third generation 1xxx series, with non-central doors) which I picked up on its own from eBay. It came with some extra couplings (frustratingly non-standard!), so I can run these railcars in any order, as long as the powered Aln663 is present!

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