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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
>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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Other than the cost of the car (which is going to hold its value for decades) & its fees, how is this anywhere near decadent if someone with some money likes to travel this way?
Wherein lies the harm?
People spend more on higher end RVs, burning more fuel, wheels & wear.
This is nowhere near the league of anything that travels through the air with a hint of luxury.
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.
Pretty sure if you own your own $2 million+ private train car this is not a big deal.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
If I was extremely wealthy I would ride around in my private rail car over flying 100% of the time.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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”
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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]
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.
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.
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.
How does it work if you want a steam train?
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.
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.
Puts a smile on my face!
Are we the baddies?
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.
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.
If you can afford one, you can surely afford a second one to put your car/bike/gear/stuff in
The limo, driver, cook, and other toys follow in the second car.
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.
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/
Dystopic and representative of the decadence of the US empire.
Other than the cost of the car (which is going to hold its value for decades) & its fees, how is this anywhere near decadent if someone with some money likes to travel this way?
Wherein lies the harm?
People spend more on higher end RVs, burning more fuel, wheels & wear.
This is nowhere near the league of anything that travels through the air with a hint of luxury.
The privatization of the public good is the problem, regardless of how ecological or economical you rig your economy to make it look.
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.