Those prices seem in reach for a dream vacation that you save up for. You can rent railcars that are already approved. buying a custom rail car is possible but likely out of budget for normal people.
That's what makes this interesting to me. Because I feel like, if you own an operatable train car that can be hooked up to AmTrak, then you not only don't have to ask for the pricing, but do you even have to google to see if you can hook it up?
An operable train car could be something you have as a coop deal. If you are good with tools you can probably trade labor for use of a car. (There are several rr clubs restoring old cars that would then qualify - check the club for terms - might even be a club event so the costs are shared with others)
China has more than 550 cities with high speed rail lines spanning over 40,000km. each with first class, toilets, and meal services.
Or...you can buy an entire rail car, hitch it to the haggard burro that is Amtrak and chug along at pony express speeds across the United States of nothingness until freight rail causes you to have to stop for 3 hours at a time as you do not have right of way.
Enjoy Batesland Nebraska at 20mph slower than the interstates posted speed limit.
who at Amtrak thought this was worth even mentioning?
Amtrak does have right-of-way by federal law for over 50 years now. However, the freight operators don't care and the federal government refuses to enforce it.
People with private train cars probably have a louder voice than most rail passengers so if this gets more popular perhaps that could change.
The freight operators say they obey law. I've talk to their drivers (on my last trip one was taking amtrak) who tell about hours waiting for a late amtrak.
i don't know who is right but I don't trust anyone to tell the full truth.
They do obey the law: they're required to pull onto a siding to allow Amtrak to stay on time. So the operators ensure the train is too long for any of the sidings, which fits them into an escape clause. Any cargo train stuck waiting for Amtrak simply isn't fully stacked yet.
Closing that loophole is what the government is dragging its feet about.
At those prices, this would have to compete against options like a private chauffeur in a Rolls-Royce though, or a private luxury tour bus. Both of which would come in considerably cheaper.
I would rather fly commercial than be driven in any private vehicle long distance. I would, however, embrace the luxury of a slower trip by private railcar. Beyond the novelty, I could presumably stretch out and sleep and maybe enjoy a great meal.
I think the historical element has a strong appeal. Say, a restored luxury railcar with period appropriate antiques. That would be an experience that is hard to get elsewhere. Even old style hotels and such somehow feel less authentic and "alive" than riding in a luxury railcar from the 1800s.
It depends. I take the Amtrack from Albany to Chicago once a year or so because I hate flying. It's maybe an hour or two slower than driving and that's with a lot of time built in to the schedule for delays. The last time I took it We left Albany 45 minutes late and still made it on time to Chicago. Yes, delays happen, just like in traffic or at the air port, but I find the focus on delays when Amtrak comes up extremely over-stated. Perhaps it's just the routes I'm on.
Private rail car is nowhere near as comfortable as actually getting home quickly, especially you have the kind of home that people with all the money in the world do.
Many people with money travel so much home is a hotel. They 'have a large manson that the staff says is nice' isn't quite the truth but it isn't far off.
though they also don't have time to take a slow train.
Seattle metro area: Some of the right-of-ways have been converted into rail trails, so the map probably isn't THAT bad. But yeah the current state of US rail is depressing compared to what could have been (or yet could be!)
Do you really have a privately owned rail car in order to go fast? It sounds to me more like a self-driving campervan, you can sit back and watch the world roll by.
I think the railcar equivalent will eventually become reality (if it isn't already)
Lots of people tool around in giant class-a motorhomes. They are 40 or 45 feet long. They are basically small apartments with double-door fridges, dishwasher, washer/dryer, starlink, etc
if they add the self-driving stuff, it will make them extra popular.
There is nothing more saddening than the state of America’s train situation. It’s like we’re fundamentally incapable of understanding the value of shared infrastructure.
In the rare case that a state escapes the matrix and actually realizes the benefit, we can’t get the damn thing built.
I want a packed bullet train, not a fucking slow private train car.
Strangely enough, Florida, of all places seems to be having really good success with their Brightline rail network. The initial system runs from Miami to Orlando, with a few stops in between. They're planning on expanding up north and east into the panhandle. Financially things are a bit dicey, but it got built, and it's reliable. Ridership is increasing, which takes cars of the road, and property values in the areas it stops are going up. Meanwhile California doesn't even have their tiny "initial operating segment" built, and is projecting to be up to 3-4x their original budget of 33 billion dollars.
The only halfway competent rail in the US is that northeast corridor in New England. Everything else is crap. And even that northeast corridor is only halfway competent. That people are raving about any of the rail in the US only betrays a lack of use of many foreign rail services. Particularly those in Asia.
It’s sad, because I believe we have the ability to outdo everyone, but we can’t get it done.
Land was granted to the railroads with the agreement that they would run passenger rail services. When passenger rail became so unprofitable that it was bankrupting rail companies, they lobbied to make it the governments responsibility to move people around and leave them to make money shuffling freight.
Most rails were not land grant. Those were what you read about in history, but most had to buy their own land. Land grant mostly was for places where today almost nobody lives and even less back then.
American trains are the best in the world - at freight. even overall I'd call us rail best in the world - the state of freight rail is that bad in most of the world.
of course people see passanger trains and don't think of freight. However that is missing the true picture.
Well there was that whole genocide of Native Americans thing. And that Civil War thing where half the country was killing the other half. Black people were slaves, women couldn't vote (or own property, or a bank account, etc), being gay was illegal, the Irish were the immigrant whipping boys. Then there was the Jim Crow era, WWI, the Depression, Prohibition, WW2, McCarthyism, the Korean War, Vietnam (when the last Jim Crow laws were repealed).
But, sure, right now is the most depressing time in US history.
My wife loves the train (hates driving) and so this would be quite interesting to us. But I've heard too many Amtrak horror stories, like the one about how the train broke down about ten miles away from her destination, and they wouldn't let her get off, so she had to sit there for ten hours until they were able to fix it.
This is definitely the weirdest part, their refusal to treat passengers with any respect. For the most part the crew often doesn't know if it will get fixed in one hour or ten hours, but they don't communicate this and there's never an option to bail and have someone pick you up.
Last time I took Amtrak out of LA Union Station, it broke down but luckily was able to pull into the next station so people could get off and find another route. I stayed on and after about 4 hours we were towed back to union station.
We once rode the Amtrak from Sacramento to Reno, through the snow, with the kids. Figured it would be a fun adventure. On the ride up, we were about an hour behind schedule - no problem. On the way back, we started our day at 8am and didn't arrive home til 8pm. Train had to keep stopping for "unexpected delays". Regulars on the train were saying it happens all the time. Not fun.
Why anyone would pay 100x the price to have the same experience is beyond me.
I was reverse commuting at the time and wondered what the hell the car was as it looked different than all the other modern cars. I imagine in its heyday it was probably a decent party back up to the North Shore.
I recently took a trip from Chicago to LA and saw some folks doing just this! They had a restored Pullman sleeping car and a kitchen/bar car behind it with crystal chandeliers. Maybe the single most luxurious way to travel. Every stop people would get out and gawk at their cars.
I'm not sure why, other than for the nostalgia, I'd do this other than a trans-Atlantic ocean liner. I have take fairly comfortable sleepers in Europe but nothing like a luxurious ship.
There’s an episode of Archer where Cheryl Tunt, the company secretary, does exactly this on a trip from New York to somewhere in Canada. Their agency was extraditing a Nova Scotian separatist.
How about airship tours? Not massively different to a train car in terms of pace, but with much more space and good line of sight for sightseeing and internet connectivity.
>so how do you get a privately owned train car and get it to the tracks or etc?
I think you wait in a remote bit of Nevada for a train to pass, and trigger a rock fall which causes the driver to slam on the brakes and bring the train to a stop just short of the rockfall.
Then, you and your posse jump out from behind some rocks and fire your revolvers in the air, and the driver sticks his hands up. There's much celebration, and back slapping as you discover the train also happens to have a massive amount of gold bullion on board.
The rest is a bit blurry, can't remember seeing what you then do, but it probably involves filing down the serial numbers on the frame or something like that?
> Having worked at a railroad, I will say it’s comically easy to steal a train, for instance. They all have the same key, which is basically just a plastic rod.
> The argument of the railroads is... okay, you have our train. Now what? You either go forward or you go backward, and we know where both those directions go.
The bad guys are driving their train when a cop train shows up in the mirrors behind their train.
Cop walks up to the window and asks for their license and registration please. Another shootout occurs followed by a multi-track multi-train police chase, but everyone needs to stay on their respective train tracks.
There was some discussion on the process here a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19505897 written shortly after Amtrak complained "These operations caused significant operational distraction, failed to capture fully allocated profitable margins". It's not an easy process.
A disused car is $100-200k depending on condition, and it’d probably cost about as much to refurbish into use. An off the shelf fully outfitted luxury car can cost a million or more.
Operating, maintenance, and storage costs dwarf the capital costs within a few years so unless it’s rusting in a backyard, the expensive part is using it rather than buying one. Storage alone costs $30k-50k a year.
The companies that make train cars have a way to do this, so you probably just pay them to do it as part of the price you pay them to make you train car.
One of the places people with these cars visit is Yellowstone, and I've talked to a few of them at the local burger stand (closest food to the railroad siding where they "park"). Interesting people, and less pretentious than I expected for private train owners. I suppose a train is cheaper than a private plane.
ask UP - I'm sure they will agree to run big boy for you for a price. I'd guess $100k/day but I'm not going to ask. Of course if you have something historic and are going where they want to show off big boy anyway it could be much less.
Well, the fuel - typically coal - heats a big container of water to the boiling point. The vapor is collected, and used as a force (because steam expands) to move the pistons, just like the ones moved by gas explosions in your car.
Then the conductor pulls the chain, and the train makes that whistle sound and spouts a lot of white smoke, which means you are nearing an old-timey town.
This better than every wealthy person owning an RV. Though there is still the last mile problem. Does my personal train car have a vehicle on board (probably I’m rich in this scenario)?
Groups of wealthy people could split a train car. Private Train-car time shares?
If you're actually wealthy, you don't have to split a train car.
Last mile problem? Have your personal assistant drive whatever vehicle you want and have it waiting when the train arrives. They can take an Uber back to wherever they need to be next.
Characteristic of the time. Anything that benefits some fraction of the population that isn't wealthy is woke and is thus doubleplusungood. Thusly, organizations are forced to derive their revenue from catering to the small fraction of wealthy folks who derive more and more from everyone else.
Only in the US could the most collectivistic and efficient mode of transport be perverted into yet another incredibly inefficient and individualistic toy for the wealthy. I can't seem to find anything like that anywhere else.
It anppears to be Amtrak’s greater flexibility and uniformity of gauges in North America that allows this. Europe has more of the historical private wealth that would still own and want to operate a private train or carriage.
I don't think the gauges were much of an issue for passenger trains, after all there were many running across Europe (Orient Express etc).
It's probably more that distances were shorter, the crazy rich could afford an entire train, and the less-rich would use private luxury carriages owned by the railway companies.
Since the 1950s or so, the flexibility has been gradually lost as trains become mostly fixed formations for speed, safety etc, so that certainly explains why it doesn't exist now in Europe.
Yeah, its a bank on top of many natural resources. It happens to be populated exclusively by people that failed wherever they came from, and a few bankers.
If you're wondering the most obvious thing:
- Cost per mile: $4.72
- Minimum charge: $2296
There are also a huge number of other fees that I can't tell if you'd need to pay in practice, e.g.:
- Additional Locomotive Fee (per loco mile): $7.54
- Amtrak Locomotive Daily Charge: $2513
- Head End Power Daily Charge: $3433
- Annual Administrative Fee: $574
https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
If you have to ask you can't afford it.
In my experience the people who can afford everything are often the ones looking to pay the least at all times.
You don’t get rich by writing checks. Except pg.
Those prices seem in reach for a dream vacation that you save up for. You can rent railcars that are already approved. buying a custom rail car is possible but likely out of budget for normal people.
Parking at a terminal really gets you too
Pretty sure if you own your own $2 million+ private train car this is not a big deal.
I'm not into trains at all, but the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners has some pretty nice looking cars you can charter:
https://www.aaprco.com/charter-a-private-car
I guess it starts at $30,000? Though that might be for an entire train, not just the cars above.
https://www.amtrak.com/charter-your-private-train
That seems to be chartering the cars from Amtrak, though, not from the private car owners.
I clicked a random one and it was owned by a local club not amtrak
I've found nowhere that any price is mentioned, so I have to assume that it's one of those "if you have to ask..." sort of things.
Edit: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
Slightly less than $5 a mile with a minimum of $2296. The rate to park your car is around $4000 a month. Fun thing to do if you have the money.
If a private jet is just too "new money" for you, you can travel in style like a 19th-century robber baron.
My mustache is tingling.
The rate document has costs
https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
That's what makes this interesting to me. Because I feel like, if you own an operatable train car that can be hooked up to AmTrak, then you not only don't have to ask for the pricing, but do you even have to google to see if you can hook it up?
An operable train car could be something you have as a coop deal. If you are good with tools you can probably trade labor for use of a car. (There are several rr clubs restoring old cars that would then qualify - check the club for terms - might even be a club event so the costs are shared with others)
Like a tiny home on the correct train car rated construction rolling platform
Well, you personally don't, but someone who works for you will have to find those details and work this out.
This. There’s an old saying - “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it”
It's linked as "Rate Addendum Number 7".
https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
I would 100% spend the whole time cosplaying the crew of Archer, and refer to it as Tunt Rail.
Does Amtrak allow ocelots if it is someone else's car?
China has more than 550 cities with high speed rail lines spanning over 40,000km. each with first class, toilets, and meal services.
Or...you can buy an entire rail car, hitch it to the haggard burro that is Amtrak and chug along at pony express speeds across the United States of nothingness until freight rail causes you to have to stop for 3 hours at a time as you do not have right of way.
Enjoy Batesland Nebraska at 20mph slower than the interstates posted speed limit.
who at Amtrak thought this was worth even mentioning?
Amtrak does have right-of-way by federal law for over 50 years now. However, the freight operators don't care and the federal government refuses to enforce it.
People with private train cars probably have a louder voice than most rail passengers so if this gets more popular perhaps that could change.
The freight operators say they obey law. I've talk to their drivers (on my last trip one was taking amtrak) who tell about hours waiting for a late amtrak.
i don't know who is right but I don't trust anyone to tell the full truth.
They do obey the law: they're required to pull onto a siding to allow Amtrak to stay on time. So the operators ensure the train is too long for any of the sidings, which fits them into an escape clause. Any cargo train stuck waiting for Amtrak simply isn't fully stacked yet.
Closing that loophole is what the government is dragging its feet about.
If I was extremely wealthy I would ride around in my private rail car over flying 100% of the time.
At those prices, this would have to compete against options like a private chauffeur in a Rolls-Royce though, or a private luxury tour bus. Both of which would come in considerably cheaper.
I would rather fly commercial than be driven in any private vehicle long distance. I would, however, embrace the luxury of a slower trip by private railcar. Beyond the novelty, I could presumably stretch out and sleep and maybe enjoy a great meal.
I think the historical element has a strong appeal. Say, a restored luxury railcar with period appropriate antiques. That would be an experience that is hard to get elsewhere. Even old style hotels and such somehow feel less authentic and "alive" than riding in a luxury railcar from the 1800s.
For me the whole point of flying is fast travel. Private even more so, because it operates on your schedule.
A Amtrak train is slower than driving.
It depends. I take the Amtrack from Albany to Chicago once a year or so because I hate flying. It's maybe an hour or two slower than driving and that's with a lot of time built in to the schedule for delays. The last time I took it We left Albany 45 minutes late and still made it on time to Chicago. Yes, delays happen, just like in traffic or at the air port, but I find the focus on delays when Amtrak comes up extremely over-stated. Perhaps it's just the routes I'm on.
If you have all the money in the world, why would you need to go fast? Just enjoy the ride in comfort and style.
Private rail car is nowhere near as comfortable as actually getting home quickly, especially you have the kind of home that people with all the money in the world do.
Many people with money travel so much home is a hotel. They 'have a large manson that the staff says is nice' isn't quite the truth but it isn't far off.
though they also don't have time to take a slow train.
And for some, the journey is the destination.
> across the United States of nothingness
Check out this map if you want to be really sad: https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=10akDabya8L6nWIJi-4Z...
Seattle metro area: Some of the right-of-ways have been converted into rail trails, so the map probably isn't THAT bad. But yeah the current state of US rail is depressing compared to what could have been (or yet could be!)
A private airship would definitely be cooler.
Do you really have a privately owned rail car in order to go fast? It sounds to me more like a self-driving campervan, you can sit back and watch the world roll by.
I think the railcar equivalent will eventually become reality (if it isn't already)
Lots of people tool around in giant class-a motorhomes. They are 40 or 45 feet long. They are basically small apartments with double-door fridges, dishwasher, washer/dryer, starlink, etc
if they add the self-driving stuff, it will make them extra popular.
I think mobileye might have something.
Sounds like the kind of thing a billionaire would do in a Neal Stephenson book.
(actually I think it is something a billionaire does in a NS book)
needing to be anywhere at a particular urgent time is very nouveau riche. making people wait on you is more elegant, right?
/s
It’s always been like that.
Previously:
Privately-Owned Rail Cars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33460052 - Nov 2022 (244 comments)
Ride in your privately-owned rail car to see North America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324823 - Oct 2015 (2 comments)
There is nothing more saddening than the state of America’s train situation. It’s like we’re fundamentally incapable of understanding the value of shared infrastructure.
In the rare case that a state escapes the matrix and actually realizes the benefit, we can’t get the damn thing built.
I want a packed bullet train, not a fucking slow private train car.
Strangely enough, Florida, of all places seems to be having really good success with their Brightline rail network. The initial system runs from Miami to Orlando, with a few stops in between. They're planning on expanding up north and east into the panhandle. Financially things are a bit dicey, but it got built, and it's reliable. Ridership is increasing, which takes cars of the road, and property values in the areas it stops are going up. Meanwhile California doesn't even have their tiny "initial operating segment" built, and is projecting to be up to 3-4x their original budget of 33 billion dollars.
The only halfway competent rail in the US is that northeast corridor in New England. Everything else is crap. And even that northeast corridor is only halfway competent. That people are raving about any of the rail in the US only betrays a lack of use of many foreign rail services. Particularly those in Asia.
It’s sad, because I believe we have the ability to outdo everyone, but we can’t get it done.
It’s never been shared, FWIW. The rails are mostly privately owned and were built that way too.
That said - bullet trains are great but I fully support the ability of individuals to pay to access freight or passenger rail to subsidize the infra.
Land was granted to the railroads with the agreement that they would run passenger rail services. When passenger rail became so unprofitable that it was bankrupting rail companies, they lobbied to make it the governments responsibility to move people around and leave them to make money shuffling freight.
Most rails were not land grant. Those were what you read about in history, but most had to buy their own land. Land grant mostly was for places where today almost nobody lives and even less back then.
> bullet trains are great but I fully support the ability of individuals to pay to access freight or passenger rail to subsidize the infra.
It’d be even nicer if you could hook your private car to a bullet train.
American trains are the best in the world - at freight. even overall I'd call us rail best in the world - the state of freight rail is that bad in most of the world.
of course people see passanger trains and don't think of freight. However that is missing the true picture.
> It’s like we’re fundamentally incapable of understanding the value of shared infrastructure.
I think most people understand the value of parks, roads, and airports.
> There is nothing more saddening than the state of America’s train situation
I can come up with a dozen things much more depressing than that and only in federal level politics.
This seems to be the most depressing time in US history.
It is because there’s NO REASON for us to be suffering, besides the fact that morons have political power
Well there was that whole genocide of Native Americans thing. And that Civil War thing where half the country was killing the other half. Black people were slaves, women couldn't vote (or own property, or a bank account, etc), being gay was illegal, the Irish were the immigrant whipping boys. Then there was the Jim Crow era, WWI, the Depression, Prohibition, WW2, McCarthyism, the Korean War, Vietnam (when the last Jim Crow laws were repealed).
But, sure, right now is the most depressing time in US history.
My wife loves the train (hates driving) and so this would be quite interesting to us. But I've heard too many Amtrak horror stories, like the one about how the train broke down about ten miles away from her destination, and they wouldn't let her get off, so she had to sit there for ten hours until they were able to fix it.
This is definitely the weirdest part, their refusal to treat passengers with any respect. For the most part the crew often doesn't know if it will get fixed in one hour or ten hours, but they don't communicate this and there's never an option to bail and have someone pick you up.
Last time I took Amtrak out of LA Union Station, it broke down but luckily was able to pull into the next station so people could get off and find another route. I stayed on and after about 4 hours we were towed back to union station.
We once rode the Amtrak from Sacramento to Reno, through the snow, with the kids. Figured it would be a fun adventure. On the ride up, we were about an hour behind schedule - no problem. On the way back, we started our day at 8am and didn't arrive home til 8pm. Train had to keep stopping for "unexpected delays". Regulars on the train were saying it happens all the time. Not fun.
Why anyone would pay 100x the price to have the same experience is beyond me.
The car horror stories are much worse
Having a toilet in your sleeping compartment, in 40cm from your pillow is a horror story by itself.
Maybe small spaces just aren't your thing?
I saw this car on Chicago Metra's UPN line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_553
I was reverse commuting at the time and wondered what the hell the car was as it looked different than all the other modern cars. I imagine in its heyday it was probably a decent party back up to the North Shore.
I recently took a trip from Chicago to LA and saw some folks doing just this! They had a restored Pullman sleeping car and a kitchen/bar car behind it with crystal chandeliers. Maybe the single most luxurious way to travel. Every stop people would get out and gawk at their cars.
I'm not sure why, other than for the nostalgia, I'd do this other than a trans-Atlantic ocean liner. I have take fairly comfortable sleepers in Europe but nothing like a luxurious ship.
There’s an episode of Archer where Cheryl Tunt, the company secretary, does exactly this on a trip from New York to somewhere in Canada. Their agency was extraditing a Nova Scotian separatist.
>Cheryl Tunt, the company secretary,
The independently wealthy company secretary, whose family owned the railroad, as I recall.
Not just owners, they built the railroads, in that universe. She seems to recall her grandmother thinking “slavery was pretty great”
It feels like there’s some kind of Party Train opportunity here, similar to a party bus.
How about airship tours? Not massively different to a train car in terms of pace, but with much more space and good line of sight for sightseeing and internet connectivity.
Hindenburg.
I know it's silly, but it was an instant mental blurt, and I can't be the only one.
Airship design has advanced since the Hindenburg. Notably, they don't use hydrogen anymore.
“attached to our trains between specified locations”
What are they?
Riding in the family rail car like it’s 1895 (and you’re a robber baron)
This railfan web site occasionally includes sighting reports, sometimes with photos, of trains that include private railcars.
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/list.php?4
so how do you get a privately owned train car and get it to the tracks or etc?
from this page it sounds like you own it but Amtrak keeps it parked at their switching stations or something
>so how do you get a privately owned train car and get it to the tracks or etc?
I think you wait in a remote bit of Nevada for a train to pass, and trigger a rock fall which causes the driver to slam on the brakes and bring the train to a stop just short of the rockfall.
Then, you and your posse jump out from behind some rocks and fire your revolvers in the air, and the driver sticks his hands up. There's much celebration, and back slapping as you discover the train also happens to have a massive amount of gold bullion on board.
The rest is a bit blurry, can't remember seeing what you then do, but it probably involves filing down the serial numbers on the frame or something like that?
I work for rail.
That's pretty much it.
The serial numbers are on the axle bearing covers, BTW.
> Having worked at a railroad, I will say it’s comically easy to steal a train, for instance. They all have the same key, which is basically just a plastic rod.
> The argument of the railroads is... okay, you have our train. Now what? You either go forward or you go backward, and we know where both those directions go.
[credit: thanatos_dem]
The bad guys are driving their train when a cop train shows up in the mirrors behind their train.
Cop walks up to the window and asks for their license and registration please. Another shootout occurs followed by a multi-track multi-train police chase, but everyone needs to stay on their respective train tracks.
>a cop train
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e6/55/f9/e655f9c6ae124664ad5c...
That looked very British. Apparently it was made for an advert for a 1980s high speed train.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_37
Then things go south. I mean really south, heading to the Mexican border.
On a little platform on wheels, with a see-saw type manual propulsion. And the police are waving their billy clubs and gaining on you!
Check in with the association of private railcar owners: https://www.aaprco.com/
There was some discussion on the process here a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19505897 written shortly after Amtrak complained "These operations caused significant operational distraction, failed to capture fully allocated profitable margins". It's not an easy process.
Any idea how much it costs to buy your own private train car?
A disused car is $100-200k depending on condition, and it’d probably cost about as much to refurbish into use. An off the shelf fully outfitted luxury car can cost a million or more.
Operating, maintenance, and storage costs dwarf the capital costs within a few years so unless it’s rusting in a backyard, the expensive part is using it rather than buying one. Storage alone costs $30k-50k a year.
Very interesting! I guess it would be unpopular for them to stop?
Private collectors offer them for charter.
https://www.aaprco.com/
They do. But I didn't see anything on there about cost. Does anyone know, even rough numbers?
See the other posts but realistically it’s in the tens of thousands.
Which considering how many can travel in one might not be terribly expensive.
Football supporters in England sometimes charter whole trains to see particular matches.
I've only seen one of these trains once, and it was an ordinary train. I've no idea what the cost would be.
It's really whatever you want to pay. i.e. You can get anything from rusted scrap metal up to extravagant luxury.
How much is a bare minimum safety rusted piece of crap? Something tells me you can't win over Amtrak pricing, sadly
The companies that make train cars have a way to do this, so you probably just pay them to do it as part of the price you pay them to make you train car.
One of the places people with these cars visit is Yellowstone, and I've talked to a few of them at the local burger stand (closest food to the railroad siding where they "park"). Interesting people, and less pretentious than I expected for private train owners. I suppose a train is cheaper than a private plane.
How does it work if you want a steam train?
ask UP - I'm sure they will agree to run big boy for you for a price. I'd guess $100k/day but I'm not going to ask. Of course if you have something historic and are going where they want to show off big boy anyway it could be much less.
Well, the fuel - typically coal - heats a big container of water to the boiling point. The vapor is collected, and used as a force (because steam expands) to move the pistons, just like the ones moved by gas explosions in your car.
Then the conductor pulls the chain, and the train makes that whistle sound and spouts a lot of white smoke, which means you are nearing an old-timey town.
This better than every wealthy person owning an RV. Though there is still the last mile problem. Does my personal train car have a vehicle on board (probably I’m rich in this scenario)?
Groups of wealthy people could split a train car. Private Train-car time shares?
> Does my personal train car have a vehicle on board (probably I’m rich in this scenario)?
The back lowers and either a black Trans Am or a trio of red white & blue Minis drive out, depending on personal taste.
I was thinking you could just park one of those small 'air taxis' to the top of the train car (allowing clearance for tunnels and bridges).
If you can afford one, you can surely afford a second one to put your car/bike/gear/stuff in
If you're actually wealthy, you don't have to split a train car.
Last mile problem? Have your personal assistant drive whatever vehicle you want and have it waiting when the train arrives. They can take an Uber back to wherever they need to be next.
And during downtime you could sell space on your train car. Maybe even have an app for it, like uber for trains. Or as commonly know, regular trains.
The limo, driver, cook, and other toys follow in the second car.
Reminds me of seeing Stalin's personal train car[1] at a museum in his birthplace in Gori, Georgia, a couple of years ago.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin_Museum,_Gori#/me...
How about the personal train car of (Mad / Fairy Tale) King Ludwig II of Bavaria: https://www.kulturstiftung.de/ein-versailles-auf-raedern/
Characteristic of the time. Anything that benefits some fraction of the population that isn't wealthy is woke and is thus doubleplusungood. Thusly, organizations are forced to derive their revenue from catering to the small fraction of wealthy folks who derive more and more from everyone else.
Only in the US could the most collectivistic and efficient mode of transport be perverted into yet another incredibly inefficient and individualistic toy for the wealthy. I can't seem to find anything like that anywhere else.
This was an interesting thread with some history of private train cars/carriages in Europe with links to a few that still exist. https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?17,2602590,n...
It anppears to be Amtrak’s greater flexibility and uniformity of gauges in North America that allows this. Europe has more of the historical private wealth that would still own and want to operate a private train or carriage.
I don't think the gauges were much of an issue for passenger trains, after all there were many running across Europe (Orient Express etc).
It's probably more that distances were shorter, the crazy rich could afford an entire train, and the less-rich would use private luxury carriages owned by the railway companies.
Since the 1950s or so, the flexibility has been gradually lost as trains become mostly fixed formations for speed, safety etc, so that certainly explains why it doesn't exist now in Europe.
Puts a smile on my face!
Are we the baddies?
The US feels more and more like a playground for rich peope. Insert ‘always has been’ meme
Affordable public transport for the peasants though? lmao no
Yeah, its a bank on top of many natural resources. It happens to be populated exclusively by people that failed wherever they came from, and a few bankers.