Your friends might find the following websites helpful:

http://www.sncf.com - French railways
http://www.trenitalia.com - Italian railways
http://www.deutschebahn.de ......... which although it's German railways can give good details of all rail connections in Europe, and can be used in English!

I would suggest seat reservations are a good idea (though you sometimes have to push folk out of your reserved places!!). These sites will give you times and durations but will only give you prices I think on the French and Italian sites - being a third party, the DB site doesn't like giving international fares!

It is certainly possible, it would take about 8 hours and for much of the journey you would have sea views.

Italian train info in English is here

The summer timetable information is in but reservations may not be open yet (try a couple of months before). Use the station names "Firenze" and "Nice Ville"

The easiest service departs just before 08:00 (with one change giving time for lunch in Genova). The one around 10:30 may be a more convenient departure time but has three changes.

Tickets can be purchased on-line once reservations have opened, you can select "Self Service" as the Ticket Delivery Option and collect the tickets from a machine when you get there to save worrying about them getting lost in the post.

At present the system is not giving prices, says try again later (story of my life!)

Thanks for your replies and the work you have put into them. I will pass all the info on to them.

Thanks again

Linda