Midnight train from GA: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle • Hacker News Board

Re: Midnight train from GA: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle

#141

Post by jasomill » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 4:37 AM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #135

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

due to the length of the trip it’s not practical with non-sleeping seat I don't know what this anti-train propaganda is going on in this post, but this is laughable. All of the seats are sleepers on Amtrak at least. I went from Cincinnati to San Diego without a sleeper.

Different people have different standards. I've done many sleeper trips and several coach trips across the country over the years. Coach was fine when I was a teenager, now that I'm approaching 40, I'll pass.

Round-trip coach on Amtrak from Indianapolis to Las Vegas* in my early 20s is definitely a fun thing I'll never do again.

One of the friends I was with threw in the towel and bought a plane ticket home, though to be fair she was traveling with her 18-month-old daughter at the time and it's honestly a testament to youthful indiscretions that she even went along with the plan in the first place!

Personally, I find driving to be a much better way to see the US than trains, especially if you avoid interstate highways.

Living in Indiana with much of my family on the east and west coasts, I actually prefer driving

Like Amtrak, driving is rarely cheaper than flying, especially when traveling alone on a multi-day trip if you're not willing to sleep at rest areas and don't have friends to stay with at convenient points along the way.

For reference, from Indy, on the interstate, NYC is an easy one-day trip (~12 hours), and LA is a long but viable two-day trip with a stop in Denver (~15 hours/day), but SF and the Pacific Northwest are pushing it even in two days. Taking non-interstate routes can take much longer, especially when traveling through the mountains or major metro areas.

* Actually from Chicago to Needles, CA, with a bus between Indy and Chicago and a van between Needles and Vegas, because Amtrak didn't even offer service to Indy or Vegas at the time.

Re: Midnight train from GA: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle

#142

Post by shiroiuma » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 6:47 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #90

satvikpendem wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China it's a matter of politics rather than financial sense, of unifying the country hence why they have them in ethnic minority areas too. The trains would be like roads, sure, most people wouldn't take them from one end to the other, A to Z, but there are enough people to take them from A to D, J to N, Q to T, so to speak. If one could commute in one hour from Boston to DC for example each way, daily without fly…

> it's Zoom I heard something like that about the Concorde at the Air and Space Museum. What killed it was not fuel costs, but cheaper long-distance phone calls and fax machines. But if a country takes the Chinese approach and pushed inexpensive rail as a way to open new economic opportunities, the idea of flying as your daily commute moves from ridiculous to feasible (if you replace the airplane with a train).

The thing that killed the Concorde was a fatal crash that killed everyone on board.

The thing was already losing money because it guzzled fuel and was horribly loud and uncomfortable inside, while still costing a fortune for tickets. Not many people really wanted to pay 1st-class fares for worse-than-economy comfort just to shave a couple hours off the flight. Also, the plane could only operate at supersonic speeds over the ocean, so when it flew to/from Texas, it had to operate at subsonic speeds (and guzzle even more fuel because it was inefficient at those speeds), and the average trip time wasn't that much faster than a regular jumbo jet. It had been going downhill for a while, but that fatal crash was the end; they stopped all operations after that.

Sure, better communications might have contributed to its downfall, but that would have affected all air travel; just comparing like-for-like, the Concorde really wasn't a great alternative to the subsonic jumbo jets which became more and more prevalent for transcontinental routes.

Re: Midnight train from GA: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle

#143

Post by kortilla » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:35 AM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #106

kortilla wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree except for the meals. They are just OK. The experience of talking to other people on the train can be nice but the food itself is not “delicious”. If you really like to have good food when you travel, the dining car wears thin quite quickly. I lament the lack of options for better food (I would happily pay more).

I was massively impressed by the food when I took it, certainly as good as any restaurant my expenses policy even attempts to allow me to eat in, and I'd say better than most first class on BA which I've flown a few times, other than the fixed meal times (in F on BA you can eat whenever you want)

Yeah, but airline is a low bar and IMO the bar is much higher for something you have to eat 9 meals on.

Re: Midnight train from GA: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle

#144

Post by pstuart » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #110

pstuart wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should nationalize the rail lines, ensure Positive Train Control is mandatory, invest in the rails and sidetracks to allow for faster trains and less traffic jams. It could be structured so the current owners don't lose money on the deal but America gets a faster, better utilized train system. So much winning!

America has the best fright system in the world. The other countries you are looking at have a great humans on train system, but freight is much worse because of it. Humans and freight generally want very difference things from transportation and so they should not be mixed at all.

I am in no way suggesting that the freight traffic be diminished, in fact it should be increased. We can have both but the rail owners only care about their immediate profits and have shown to be reckless with their management via deferring maintenance, improper staffing, and not investing in improving it.

Re: Midnight train from GA: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle

#145

Post by Loughla » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 10:53 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #125

Loughla wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From talking to people there, it seems like Quincy itself was less destroyed by politics and more just sort of left to rot by families with "important names" in the area who are resistant to change. No idea which is accurate, that's just a consistent theme from almost every conversation when I was consulting there.

Common pattern in small-ish towns, where there is a core of older wealthy people who are stereotypical NIMBYs running everything, and who want to keep their quaint little town as it is. Problem is that forces all the young people to move away to find opportunity, and then 50 years later the town is dying.

Yeah if I can add. The lack of anything for someone 18-24 years old there was kind of startling. There is zero incentive for youth to stay in that town other than family, I suppose. But the weird thing was, it was kind of a joke. Nobody took it seriously. They just kind of laughed and rolled their eyes.

It was weird.