There's a brief item in USA TODAY saying that Italian rail officials say storing luggage in train stations will be greatly reduced, following the Madrid attacks. Does anyone have more detailed information on this?

Here is the article on-line. I traveled in Italy shortly after Sept 11 and we could only store our bags at larger rail stations that had staffed baggage storage. In Florence, we had to have our bags searched by hand to be able to store them. When we got to Pisa, baggage storage was closed and all the self-service lockers were not available. We ended up taking our bags with us to see the leaning tower because we couldn't find a place to store them for an hour.

I do not know if the same changes are happening again but my guess you shouldn't count on having any type of self-service locker storage. Major city stations may have storage services available but expect hand searches on your luggage.