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?
This is churlish to the point of complete foolishness. Amtrak has a scenic view car for a reason. There is almost no stretch of the track outside of cities that fails to be a completely beautiful and picturesque portrait of our amazing country.
If you haven't tried it then you might not know. I feel bad that you haven't had this experience personally.
> causes you to have to stop for 3 hours at a time as you do not have right of way.
It's about 15 minutes and may happen once or twice a day. The longest delay I experienced was because the locomotive had a mechanical issue. That took one hour.
> who at Amtrak thought this was worth even mentioning?
What kind of person without the relevant experience would even endeavor to offer this comment?
America has some absolutely incredible scenery, but the idea that it's almost _all_ "beautiful and picturesque" is ridiculous.
People with private train cars probably have a louder voice than most rail passengers so if this gets more popular perhaps that could change.
i don't know who is right but I don't trust anyone to tell the full truth.
A Amtrak train is slower than driving.
Check out this map if you want to be really sad: https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=10akDabya8L6nWIJi-4Z...
What’s the point of billions if you don’t have an airship?!?
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.
I am sure a private railcar hitched to the Haggard Amtrak Burro is a special experience, too, particularly when your party is the only party for the staff to wait on.
/s
You should not consider Amtrak unless desperate. Even then, generally a bus would be better. Amtrak does not exist. It legally has to exist but it is worse than useless, because it pretends that it might actually be something you'd want to use.
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.
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.
It’d be even nicer if you could hook your private car to a bullet train.
of course people see passanger trains and don't think of freight. However that is missing the true picture.
Except for the electricity.
ever heard of Japan or Switzerland or China or ...?
Unfortunately despite significant capital investment to run double track on the FEC corridor from West Palm to Miami (their initial route before expanding north), they and the FEC have been unable/unwilling to do much about the fundamental flaw of rail in densely populated South Florida: at-grade crossings, many in no-horn zones because nearby residents have lobbied for that. This has been a problem for decades even when the line was freight-only.
All too predictably, a recent investigation [1] found Brightline is the deadliest passenger railroad in the US. Good data visualization and sobering reporting in that article. The railroad wants to socialize the costs of upgrading the crossings but of course privatize the profits. That said, I feel communities that want the density/development benefits of "transit" should be prepared for the costs of achieving that safely.
[1]: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article308679915.html
Brightline missed ("deferred") a bond payment last month:
> Brightline, the private rail line linking Orlando to Miami, refinanced $985M of junior debt at a record-high 14.89% yield, reflecting deep investor concern after delaying a July interest payment on $1.2B in munis. The company, already downgraded deeper into junk by S&P and Fitch, faces falling ridership (53% below projections) and revenue (67% below estimates), plus a potential cash shortfall this quarter without an equity infusion.
https://florida.municipalbonds.com/news/2025/08/15/brightlin...
It’s sad, because I believe we have the ability to outdo everyone, but we can’t get it done.
I think most people understand the value of parks, roads, and airports.
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.
But, sure, right now is the most depressing time in US history.
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.
https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
from this page it sounds like you own it but Amtrak keeps it parked at their switching stations or something
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 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]
That's pretty much it.
The serial numbers are on the axle bearing covers, BTW.
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.
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.
So you need to work within their framework. Take the smoke breaks with other passengers. Note how the door works. See where the nearby road is.
And then do a runner.
Why anyone would pay 100x the price to have the same experience is beyond me.
But that decoupling from the need to be somewhere at a time is quite hard.
There’s a wall…
- 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...
Groups of wealthy people could split a train car. Private Train-car time shares?
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.
The back lowers and either a black Trans Am or a trio of red white & blue Minis drive out, depending on personal taste.
When you get to the “pay someone to drive the car to where you need to be so that you can use it” amounts of money things become much easier.
Their trip was from Miami to Chicago back to Jacksonville (where the car is stored---I rode on it from central Florida to Boca Raton as it was being positioned prior to the start of the family trip; because it was running late, I didn't get a chance to eat lunch on it, sigh) over the course of a week or so. If I could, this is how I would travel, but of course, this being the US, it's not really a viable means of transportation.
Surely if the problem with roads and cars is that private transportation takes up too much room, then widespread private train cars by everyone would be equally problematic pretty much anywhere in the world.
https://www.floridamemory.com/fpc/memory/onlineclassroom/rai...
Why?
I know it's silly, but it was an instant mental blurt, and I can't be the only one.
You can all laugh at me if the inevitable occurs.
If you want to actually drive your steam train then you'd need to negotiate with the track owner, which may be hard, particularly if they run on PTC (there's literally one ERTMS-compliant steam train in the world, for example). There's no public right of way on railway tracks for randoms, only for Amtrak (and even they have limits).
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.
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.
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.
The independently wealthy company secretary, whose family owned the railroad, as I recall.
"Uh, trying to perform my ablutions?"
I learned a great new word from that episode. Archer is one of the best shows for strange and funny use of language, they just nail my favourite type of humour.
They're darn rare, but do exist. If I was Old Money, I'd probably build more in a few in beautiful spots - and freely loan 'em to my peers, as a social networking thing.
If a truck can get next to it then you have sewage and fuel deliver solved.
Now you just need $100k-$2000k for the private car!
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail
Theres also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_shuttle_train but they generally are shorter distance
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin_Museum,_Gori#/me...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito's_Blue_Train
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2021/02/this-was-gaddafis-pers...
Affordable public transport for the peasants though? lmao no
Imagine a private rail car which could pick you up at your doorstep and drop you off in front of your hotel. Is your destination more than a few hours away? Book an evening pick up time and utilize the sleeper configuration. For a 16 hour round trip, such a service could reduce the perceived door-to-door travel time from a full day to near zero.
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)
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.
What are they?
