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 diesel generator too), door control/communication wiring, and to upgrade the braking system.
Once you have your car and you have passed your annual inspection, you will need somewhere to park it, which usually means finding a short-line railroad or commercial business with a siding near you, and paying them a fee. Getting the car from there to the nearest Amtrak station will require you to hire a locomotive with crew (some tracks require a second car coupled to the locomotive so crossings & signals work correctly). Amtrak then has a whole schedule of fees they will charge you, from $4.09 per mile, overnight parking, fresh & wastewater servicing, transponder tags, and parking fees.
You will want to hire a chef to prepare your meals and perhaps also a steward to serve the meals, make drinks, and take care of the staterooms. I'm not sure if they need to belong to the union since they would be your employees, not the railroads (but probably).
For the less than 100 private cars in operation in America, why does Amtrak even offer this service? Like the first class section on an airliner, it's effectively all profit for them since the train was going there anyway and the extra fuel to haul it & supply power is minimal. Personally I wonder why Amtrak doesn't offer a "Presidential" fare, where 6 or so people can book a private car and get truly top tier service.
I’ve heard that occasionally (rarely) they need to put some “public” cars behind the private ones. And if that happens, you are not allowed to prevent the public passengers from walking through your private car to get between the public sections.
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.
Would it be possible to instead buy an Amtrak car and then just do the interior upgrades? Seems like it would save a lot of work on upgrades. I have to assume that Amtrak eventually retires the cars at some point. Or heck, if you're rich just buy an unfinished car from whatever company makes Amtrak cars and then finish it yourself.
Why not lease a car for a month, or a year? All those inspection, maintenance, parking, and labor costs are rolled into your fee, except the railroad can handle them much better than you can.
If it's "your" car, only people you approve of can sit in it. It's a rolling party!
Unless you used the car routinely, a hackier solution would be just to buy out a block of rooms in the sleeper car.
Amtrak.com suggests rooms from Seattle to LA are ~$700 each. https://www.craigmashburn.com/amtrakcardiagrams.html says a Superliner sleeper car has 20 rooms. So you could rent out an entire car for about $14,000. Complementary meals included!
> Amtrak then has a whole schedule of fees they will charge you, from $4.09 per mile, overnight parking, fresh & wastewater servicing, transponder tags, and parking fees.
> For the less than 100 private cars in operation in America, why does Amtrak even offer this service?
Probably same situation as in Europe, they're legally mandated to give access to people and companies to their service under FRAND conditions. If you're interested, the fee tables are for nets and stations [0][1].
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.
>For the less than 100 private cars in operation in America, why does Amtrak even offer this service?
What are you trying to ask? Don’t you answer this question, below?
>Like the first class section on an airliner, it's effectively all profit for them since the train was going there anyway and the extra fuel to haul it & supply power is minimal.
Or are you saying, there’s only 100 private cars, why not allow a Presidential fare from a fleet Amtrak cars?
My answer would be “ Like the first class section on an airliner, it's effectively all profit for them” this isn’t actually true. First class sections on planes were until recently mostly filled with frequent fliers that got free upgrades [1]. Those first class seats eat up a lot of space that could be directed to revenue-generating economy seats.
So I would imagine one reason Amtrak doesn’t offer a Presidential fare is because Amtrak would need to retrofit some cars to have that experience, and manage demand of those cars. The penalties of empty cars is less than that of an plane, but still.
Too late to add this to my original post, but a video popped up where an AAPRCO member and car owner allowed a Youtuber to travel on his private car while it and several other cars were being positioned from Chicago to West Virginia for a charter trip. Includes the stunning Cedar Rapids observation car.
A good friend of one of my ex was from india and their family had whole private train, I guess to compensate for bad roads back then. I guess its easier there with enough cash and connections. Great career, but he was/is quite out of touch with reality of how most people live their lives not only due to this.
I never wanted one to go anywhere, I've always wanted one for a tiny house / social space on my property. They always struck me as a perfect option for a unique cabin. I know there are old rail car hotels, but I've never seen one that epitomizes the pullman luxury.
> Getting the car from there to the nearest Amtrak station will require you to hire a locomotive with crew
I know long haul battery-electric trains don't make sense [0], but if it's a short distance, would it be feasible to have inbuilt battery + engine just to get the car to the Amtrak and maybe as backup power?
> (some tracks require a second car coupled to the locomotive so crossings & signals work correctly)
> Personally I wonder why Amtrak doesn't offer a "Presidential" fare, where 6 or so people can book a private car and get truly top tier service.
Could a 3rd-party company offer this? I.e., they own and operate the Presidential-like cars, and are a contractual middle-man between Amtrak and the riders?
We rode the New York Central 3, a private car built for a Vanderbilt a century ago, cross country, attached to the rear of the Lake Shore Limited, changing in Chicago to the California Zephyr. A great experience, watching the scenery go by for 4 days, with a 270-degree view from the sitting room in the rear.
Basically, there are hobbyists who buy and upgrade these cars, and try to break even on chartering trips on them. They’re clearly never happier than coming along for the journey (you need an official liaison on board anyway to interface with Amtrak staff) and fixing stuff along the way.
Some of you might be interested in The Hacker Zephyr, a cross-country train hackathon with 42 teenagers from across the world.
We worked with Amtrak and an amazing team of train enthusiasts to get 3 vintage train cars on The California Zephyr’s route across the US. We started in Vermont and ended in Los Angeles, traveling 3,502 miles over 10 days.
In germany, the privatisation and segmentation of the railway company has created many "interface points" where private entities can rent vehicles or use the tracks. This resulted in a vast amount of companies specializing in engine renting or vehicle transport, like Captrain/ITL or MRCE. The diversity in companies results in a big variety of color schemes.
Train museums use these possibilities to run extraordinary trains [1]. Rarely you can see them as replacement trains in regular service[2].
Prices start at $4500 per person twin sharing for 4 nights, so not exactly cheap, but still a few orders of magnitude less than kitting out your own. Plus it's Japan, so you get a modern train, incredible service and everything runs like clockwork, none of those being terms you'd use to describe Amtrak.
Fun facts: you're required to wear a tuxedo to dinner, and despite the price tag, the train is enormously popular and they need to use a lottery system to select who gets to ride.
We’ve had the tiny houses, shipping container homes, then the van life or schoolie (school bus as a home) trend, al of which were clever interpretations on what a home actually is.
I’m sure some enterprising YouTuber/lifestyle blogger could get us started on the private train car home era. I’m here for it.
You should see how impressive some of the luxury trains have gotten. Japan has a couple of them that are particularly luxurious. And while these aren't owned by individuals, they're indicative of what you could own.
I once was on an Amtrak train that was delayed by 6 hours because of this crap. It started with a 2 hour delay while they were hooking up someone's private car, and missed its timeslots on the rest of the route, then the crew timed out, and the delays snowballed (and the train had a skeleton crew for the rest of the trip).
A few years ago, they banned this practice because of these types of issues. If they're reintroducing it, get ready for more delays and more completely unreliable Amtrak service.
> One year ago, Amtrak issued a policy notice saying it would make drastic cuts in operating charter services run by private owners. “These operations caused significant operational distraction, failed to capture fully allocated profitable margins, and sometimes delayed our paying customers on our scheduled trains,” read the notice from March 2018. “There may be a few narrow exceptions to this policy. ... Otherwise, one-time trips and charters are immediately discontinued.”
Sometime around 2018 or so, I was looking at renting a private car. Prices were all over the place, from $2k (but you had to provide your own chef (or something like that)) to $5k (chef included) for what I'd consider decent accommodations. I was wanting something big enough to fit 5-10 people to have a hackathon. There were several companies that offered this service and all of them were towed behind amtrak. But right in the middle of trying to figure all this out, amtrak announced some "changes" and that drove the cost up a bit and I think several of these companies simply closed shop or greatly reduced their service area so I dropped the idea. Splitting the charges between 5 or 10 people seemed like a fun idea though.
Looking at the charter options, this could be an interesting american cabaret and folk music festival venue concept. Two or three nights via train, accoustic sets by performers, maybe configure couple of performance cars into the train then split performances over different cars at different times, so you can catch them in one of the cars and it spreads the audience over the train. Night stops in places with motels or camping to handle sleeping arrangements.
Anyone play the Assassins' Creed game where your base of operations in the game was a train car that continuously moved around the game world while you were on (or off) it? I thought that was a really neat mechanic
My great grandfather was an executive with some Canadian railroad company and I remember hearing about how my dad would get rides in his grandfather's private car attached to trains going to and from boarding school.
[+] [-] chiph|3 years ago|reply
Once you have your car and you have passed your annual inspection, you will need somewhere to park it, which usually means finding a short-line railroad or commercial business with a siding near you, and paying them a fee. Getting the car from there to the nearest Amtrak station will require you to hire a locomotive with crew (some tracks require a second car coupled to the locomotive so crossings & signals work correctly). Amtrak then has a whole schedule of fees they will charge you, from $4.09 per mile, overnight parking, fresh & wastewater servicing, transponder tags, and parking fees.
You will want to hire a chef to prepare your meals and perhaps also a steward to serve the meals, make drinks, and take care of the staterooms. I'm not sure if they need to belong to the union since they would be your employees, not the railroads (but probably).
For the less than 100 private cars in operation in America, why does Amtrak even offer this service? Like the first class section on an airliner, it's effectively all profit for them since the train was going there anyway and the extra fuel to haul it & supply power is minimal. Personally I wonder why Amtrak doesn't offer a "Presidential" fare, where 6 or so people can book a private car and get truly top tier service.
Here's what a restored Pullman car can look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdroQ4JqlYQ
[+] [-] Kon-Peki|3 years ago|reply
I’ve heard that occasionally (rarely) they need to put some “public” cars behind the private ones. And if that happens, you are not allowed to prevent the public passengers from walking through your private car to get between the public sections.
Is that the case?
[+] [-] Waterluvian|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jandrese|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cupertino95014|3 years ago|reply
Why not lease a car for a month, or a year? All those inspection, maintenance, parking, and labor costs are rolled into your fee, except the railroad can handle them much better than you can.
If it's "your" car, only people you approve of can sit in it. It's a rolling party!
[+] [-] sbierwagen|3 years ago|reply
Amtrak.com suggests rooms from Seattle to LA are ~$700 each. https://www.craigmashburn.com/amtrakcardiagrams.html says a Superliner sleeper car has 20 rooms. So you could rent out an entire car for about $14,000. Complementary meals included!
[+] [-] mschuster91|3 years ago|reply
> For the less than 100 private cars in operation in America, why does Amtrak even offer this service?
Probably same situation as in Europe, they're legally mandated to give access to people and companies to their service under FRAND conditions. If you're interested, the fee tables are for nets and stations [0][1].
[0] https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/geschaefte/infrastruktur/bah...
[1] https://fahrweg.dbnetze.com/fahrweg-de/kunden/leistungen/tra...
[+] [-] cebert|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aoetalks|3 years ago|reply
What are you trying to ask? Don’t you answer this question, below?
>Like the first class section on an airliner, it's effectively all profit for them since the train was going there anyway and the extra fuel to haul it & supply power is minimal.
Or are you saying, there’s only 100 private cars, why not allow a Presidential fare from a fleet Amtrak cars?
My answer would be “ Like the first class section on an airliner, it's effectively all profit for them” this isn’t actually true. First class sections on planes were until recently mostly filled with frequent fliers that got free upgrades [1]. Those first class seats eat up a lot of space that could be directed to revenue-generating economy seats.
So I would imagine one reason Amtrak doesn’t offer a Presidential fare is because Amtrak would need to retrofit some cars to have that experience, and manage demand of those cars. The penalties of empty cars is less than that of an plane, but still.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/11/03/why-its-getting-harder-t...
[+] [-] pmarreck|3 years ago|reply
2) Establish a veeeery special AirBNB
3) Profit!
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiph|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSkysFOkupI
[+] [-] saiya-jin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] don_albrecht|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h0l0cube|3 years ago|reply
I know long haul battery-electric trains don't make sense [0], but if it's a short distance, would it be feasible to have inbuilt battery + engine just to get the car to the Amtrak and maybe as backup power?
> (some tracks require a second car coupled to the locomotive so crossings & signals work correctly)
Obviously it wouldn't obviate this technicality.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0qcxyyllQ4
[+] [-] CoastalCoder|3 years ago|reply
> Personally I wonder why Amtrak doesn't offer a "Presidential" fare, where 6 or so people can book a private car and get truly top tier service.
Could a 3rd-party company offer this? I.e., they own and operate the Presidential-like cars, and are a contractual middle-man between Amtrak and the riders?
[+] [-] cultofmetatron|3 years ago|reply
they should call it "railforce one"
[+] [-] e40|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nordsieck|3 years ago|reply
Could you explain a bit more about why you would want this? This seems strictly inferior to buying a box truck and converting it for "van life".
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gwbas1c|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TimMeade|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drfuchs|3 years ago|reply
Basically, there are hobbyists who buy and upgrade these cars, and try to break even on chartering trips on them. They’re clearly never happier than coming along for the journey (you need an official liaison on board anyway to interface with Amtrak staff) and fixing stuff along the way.
http://www.nyc-3.com/
[+] [-] throwawaysleep|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwdv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] club_tropical|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachlatta|3 years ago|reply
We worked with Amtrak and an amazing team of train enthusiasts to get 3 vintage train cars on The California Zephyr’s route across the US. We started in Vermont and ended in Los Angeles, traveling 3,502 miles over 10 days.
Short documentary: https://youtu.be/2BID8_pGuqA
Planning documents and finances are open source at https://github.com/hackclub/the-hacker-zephyr
[+] [-] blueflow|3 years ago|reply
Train museums use these possibilities to run extraordinary trains [1]. Rarely you can see them as replacement trains in regular service[2].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMZAAdP431o
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YqsIzKR3Uc
[+] [-] rippercushions|3 years ago|reply
https://www.cruisetrain-sevenstars.jp/english/
Prices start at $4500 per person twin sharing for 4 nights, so not exactly cheap, but still a few orders of magnitude less than kitting out your own. Plus it's Japan, so you get a modern train, incredible service and everything runs like clockwork, none of those being terms you'd use to describe Amtrak.
Fun facts: you're required to wear a tuxedo to dinner, and despite the price tag, the train is enormously popular and they need to use a lottery system to select who gets to ride.
[+] [-] rcMgD2BwE72F|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allthecybers|3 years ago|reply
I’m sure some enterprising YouTuber/lifestyle blogger could get us started on the private train car home era. I’m here for it.
[+] [-] GrifMD|3 years ago|reply
https://www.luxurytrainclub.com/trains/seven-stars-kyushu/
https://www.jreast.co.jp/shiki-shima/en/
[+] [-] ak217|3 years ago|reply
A few years ago, they banned this practice because of these types of issues. If they're reintroducing it, get ready for more delays and more completely unreliable Amtrak service.
[+] [-] kccqzy|3 years ago|reply
From https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-25/can-you-b...
> One year ago, Amtrak issued a policy notice saying it would make drastic cuts in operating charter services run by private owners. “These operations caused significant operational distraction, failed to capture fully allocated profitable margins, and sometimes delayed our paying customers on our scheduled trains,” read the notice from March 2018. “There may be a few narrow exceptions to this policy. ... Otherwise, one-time trips and charters are immediately discontinued.”
[+] [-] chaps|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esaym|3 years ago|reply
Sometime around 2018 or so, I was looking at renting a private car. Prices were all over the place, from $2k (but you had to provide your own chef (or something like that)) to $5k (chef included) for what I'd consider decent accommodations. I was wanting something big enough to fit 5-10 people to have a hackathon. There were several companies that offered this service and all of them were towed behind amtrak. But right in the middle of trying to figure all this out, amtrak announced some "changes" and that drove the cost up a bit and I think several of these companies simply closed shop or greatly reduced their service area so I dropped the idea. Splitting the charges between 5 or 10 people seemed like a fun idea though.
[+] [-] smugma|3 years ago|reply
https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
[+] [-] reaperducer|3 years ago|reply
You will occasionally see them parked on the siding by Symphony Park when they're playing Las Vegas.
[+] [-] qull|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshmn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motohagiography|3 years ago|reply
Just found some routes through the rockies, from moab to denver: https://www.rockymountaineer.com/routes_destinations , but a southwest one would be amazing.
Economics are running a cruise, but over land on a train, with some camping and motel options to scale it. Hmm...
[+] [-] gcheong|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjslocum3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmarreck|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sofixa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anarchogeek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pseudolus|3 years ago|reply
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-25/can-you-b...