[3] Within its early years of operations, Thello sought to expand onto other routes, including to direct compete with Thalys on the Paris-Brussels cross-border service.

On 21 March 2018, the company announced that it was taking steps to establish its own high speed services between France and Italy in the coming years.

[4][7] From 11 December 2011, night trains run by Thello operated daily on the route between Paris Gare de Lyon, Dijon-Ville, Milano Centrale, and Venezia Santa Lucia.

Following the granting of permission by regulatory authorities that same year, Thello operated daytime trains between Milan and Marseille, via Genoa and Nice from December 2014.

Transdev stated that poor revenues were due to increased customs controls thanks to the European migrant crisis, the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015 as well as delays caused by railway engineering works.

[16] In June of the following year, further details emerged; the envisioned service, which was stated to potentially begin as early as June 2020, would be operated by Italian Frecciarossa 1000 trainsets and was declared to have a total journey time of six hours and 45 minutes end-to-end, more than 20 minutes faster than the existing TGV services due to the Frecciarossia trains being fitted with the necessary European Train Control System (ETCS) apparatus to facilitate their running on the Turin–Milan high-speed railway.

[25][28] On 5 April 2022,[29][30] Trenitalia France introduced a shortworking service between Lyon-Perrache and Paris Gare de Lyon, with an intermediate stop in Lyon-Part-Dieu.

[1] The sleeping cars were type MU, a design originally created for the Wagons-Lits Company, built between 1964 and 1974, while refurbished by Trenitalia during the mid-2000s at which point LED lighting & corridor CCTV were fitted while carpeting was removed.

Thello night trains had three classes:[1] Some services also comprised a restaurant car operated by LSG Sky Chefs, where passengers could be served both dinner and breakfast on board.