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Privately-Owned Rail Cars

amtrak.com

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Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#201

Post by mplanchard »

cebert wrote: post #87
chiph wrote: post #17

This is my "if I won the lottery" dream. Which it would have to be, since everything about it isn't cheap. Purchasing a Pullman car then upgrading it to Amtrak standards will cost at least $300k. Any interior upgrades are on top of that (renovating the galley with modern appliances, adding central air since some cars used block ice for cooling). Amtrak requires you add 480v head-end power (but you will likely want a…

I have a similar, but more attainable train goal of riding the Amtrak Empire Builder route from Chicago to Spokane. The route looks beautiful and has a few nice stops along the way.

Rode this going the other way (Portland to Chicago) this summer! It’s a gorgeous ride, at least until eastern Montana, which is a whole heck of a lot of nothing for a very long time. Totally worth it for going through the Columbia River Gorge and passing through Glacier National park, though!

Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#202

Post by ak217 »

differentview97 wrote: post #173
ak217 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's the "banned this practice" change that I was talking about. The documents in the link that the post is about are from 2021/2022 though. So they must have un-banned it. The "guidelines" document at https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p... lists 44 Amtrak stations throughout the US where this practice is allowed (and likely to continue to disrupt schedules for regular passengers). It…

I don't understand why Amtrak - the only operator on its own tracks - is unable to make it work, meanwhile in EU you have literally thousands of private operators operating their own trains as well as combined multi-owner trains riding on tracks belonging to dozens of owners... and it works fairly well, there certainly are no 6+ hours delays, at most an hour or so for the whole multi-state 1000km trip.

Europe has dedicated infrastructure for intercity trains used by people who need to get there on time. The US does not (outside the NEC).

Can you imagine a TGV or ICE stopping to hook up a private car?

Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#203

Post by bombcar »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #187
Ptchd wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, they don't consider weight?

If your private car is "that" heavy, and they need to hook up an extra locomotive just for you, then that is going to be a steep fee per mile added.

They actually mention it in the PDF under "more locomotives" or something.

I think that mainly applies when you add a whole train to the train (you can hire them for multiple private cars)

Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#204

Post by bookofjoe »

aliqot wrote: post #69
reaperducer wrote: post #49

There is a surprising number of big name entertainers who are afraid of flying, and either have their own rail cars, or rent them. You will occasionally see them parked on the siding by Symphony Park when they're playing Las Vegas.

That's pretty cool. Any names we might know?

Mark Hamill, Whoopi Goldberg, Lars von Trier

https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=67...

Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#205

Post by Waterluvian »

chiph wrote: post #17

This is my "if I won the lottery" dream. Which it would have to be, since everything about it isn't cheap. Purchasing a Pullman car then upgrading it to Amtrak standards will cost at least $300k. Any interior upgrades are on top of that (renovating the galley with modern appliances, adding central air since some cars used block ice for cooling). Amtrak requires you add 480v head-end power (but you will likely want a…

My billionaire dream is to make a 2/1 scale model railway. These little ride-on hobby railways are very cool. But I want everything twice as big as the real thing. Impractical, but conceptually hilarious IMO.

Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#206

Post by bookofjoe »

AlbertCory wrote: post #77
bombcar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private car is in the “less than million” range, so it’s basically a smallish land yacht.

Yeah, but you probably get these enormous bills you weren't expecting, and absolutely nothing you can do about it.

The super-rich NEVER see a bill: they have people for that

Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#207

Post by bombcar »

pooper wrote: post #128
bombcar wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s $5k per kid or $500/day per kid. Not bad at all considering.

I always get the feeling that I am not good with big numbers. Like a public library spending USD 50k+ per month(?) to Oracle seems outrageous to me but I guess it isn't so outrageous given the annual budget is over USD 100M?

Here's my trick - convert the number to $ per family per year.

So for a public library, you'd take 50k and multiply by 12 and get 600k/yr. Then you'd find the number of families served by the library, and divide that out. 600 families? That's 1k per family per year, too much. 6000 families? 100 per family per year, still high but not insane. 60000 families? Now we're down to $10. And if it were Chicago with 1 million families (or households which can be an easier number to find) we're at 60 cents per. Not bad.

You can do similar things at state and national levels to get a ballpark feeling. Student loan forgiveness will cost $400 billion over 30 years, let's say. There are about 122 million households, so forgiveness costs $3300 per household over 30 years, or $110 a year. At this point you can decide how much it's worth worrying about.

Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#209

Post by CompleteWalker »

cebert wrote: post #87
chiph wrote: post #17

This is my "if I won the lottery" dream. Which it would have to be, since everything about it isn't cheap. Purchasing a Pullman car then upgrading it to Amtrak standards will cost at least $300k. Any interior upgrades are on top of that (renovating the galley with modern appliances, adding central air since some cars used block ice for cooling). Amtrak requires you add 480v head-end power (but you will likely want a…

I have a similar, but more attainable train goal of riding the Amtrak Empire Builder route from Chicago to Spokane. The route looks beautiful and has a few nice stops along the way.

Pay attention to the timing of your ride! I rode this trip once and didn't get to the Rockies until it was too dark to see much of anything out the windows.

Re: Privately-Owned Rail Cars

#210

Post by DonHopkins »

state_less wrote: post #134
bluGill wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on personality you might enjoy a conversation with random strangers walking through. See I knew there was a plus.

I’ve been riding the Indian rail system the last few weeks and generally don’t mind the other folks in the car. The thing that does get my goat is folks blasting audio out of their devices. Most folks are fine, but it it only takes a few to spoil the fun. Rail is nice here in that it’s often electric, you don’t need to focus on the road and there is more room to move around than on a plane or a car.

How long have you been traveling on trains with your goat? How does he enjoy it, as long as folks aren't irritating him by blasting audio?
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