Privately-Owned Rail Cars
amtrak.com
amtrak.com
- 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...
Some private cars do NOT use it and instead have their own generator. In theory you could have one with no lights, etc at all.
I’ve been on an Amtrak where it lost hotel power; nothing but emergency lighting until they got to a station where they could swap the locomotive.
But the train kept running, and the conductor had to walk the entire train announcing stops verbally; with no PA system.
Wow. That is crazy and surprising. I can see losing air conditioning, but the PA should be considered mission critical.
Way back in the day of steam heating was via open-cycle steam and electric lighting via generators on passenger car axles with a local battery to keep the lights on while stopped.
Eventually with the end of steam they switched to electric heating and can conveniently siphon off electric lights from that.
The cars were usually built by a company like Pullman, usually from a time frame of roughly 1900 +/- 20 years.
Huge money pits, with tons of (often quite ornate) wood m, etc. then add the cost of restoration (again almost all of these cars are 100+ years old), retrofitting modern electrical systems, air conditioning. Could easily be a million dollar project.
But I mean, just look what a nice one is like inside.
Something like this one (Which I've actually been in)
The first time I realized this kind of thing was a tour of a baseball stadium. They showed us the suites. I forgot how much they cost but if you got a bunch of friends together to fill one then they were in the same range as medium good seats.
Example: https://www.mlb.com/padres/tickets/premium/suites Various prices, one is $4260 for 20 people. That's $213 each. Is that rich person's thing?
It wasn't clear what the private car costs but, just guessing the Train Jam did this. https://trainjam.com/faq You can see the prices for 52hr ride.
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.
Part of the draw, I'm sure, is that Metra allows alcohol on trains. So you've basically got 50+ friends drinking together on the way home, every day. Speaking of which, I thought I heard something about them bringing back the bar cars to increase revenue. (For those that don't ride the train in Chicago - it is BYOB. In the old days they actually had a public train car with a bar and bartender you could purchase from).
https://www.floridamemory.com/fpc/memory/onlineclassroom/rai...
Why?
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.
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.
But to the point some people here are making, I've done some fairly long distance train travel in Europe, including sleepers, and, while I tend to prefer it to planes especially budget ones which I basically never take, I'm not sure it's an especially efficient way to travel for the most part if you want to get from point A to point B as quickly and cost effectively as possible.
It’s such a good experience that building the rest of the trip around it can be worthwhile, but it is still not terribly fast.
But then I've also done a trans-Atlantic crossing but I was semi-retired at the time. Which I would do again at some point but was certainly neither cost nor time efficient.
Even the latter has things to see as rail lines go through so many small towns. But it’s admittedly not as cool as the mountain or shoreline trains.
Just don’t sit on the bottom floor or you’ll be staring at cornstalks for 30+ hours.
Oh man, oh man, the irony.
Formerly industrial areas of the US are poor and dilapidated because the people of places specifically including but not strictly limited to NYC and Chicago (with the help of some voters elsewhere) made big bucks sending all that productivity to poorer nations. The wealth is not there specifically because decisions were made to benefit wall street at those people's expense.
Hunger games was a more apt metaphor for the comparison than I think you thought it was.
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.
Closing that loophole is what the government is dragging its feet about.
> United States – BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad (UP) regularly operate intermodal container trains exceeding 5,000 metres (16,500 ft) in length on main lines in the western United States. On the UP, these trains can stretch to over 6,100 metres (20,000 ft) with 5 locomotives and 280 well cars.
Those are incredible figures. It would almost be a shame to ban such amazing monuments to engineering. Not to mention that it's probably the most efficent and enviromentally friendly way to do things.
the podcast well there's your problem covered it in deep detail
Amtraks are never in charge of dispatching on routes they don't own, and there's a very clear correlation between on time performance and percentage of the route they do own.
Pinnacle! I’d even have some begrudging respect for Trump if he made them bust this thing out of storage heh.
/cue bald eagle
A Amtrak train is slower than driving.
though they also don't have time to take a slow train.
I prefer train any time.
For example, Portland to Seattle isn't that far but I-5 can easily back up and become an hours-long ordeal, and SEA and PDX aren't particularly close to a lot of places.
A backlog of hundreds of hours of podcasts doesn’t hurt.
Still would prefer the train.
A train that is an hour slower than the best driving time but consistently so is easier to plan around than a car that is an hour faster or an hour slower than the train with no clear rhyme or reason.
Check out this map if you want to be really sad: https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=10akDabya8L6nWIJi-4Z...
But trails alongside very inactive tracks is also becoming more common.
What’s the point of billions if you don’t have an airship?!?
FYI, whenever they go someplace they almost always have time in the schedule dedicated to giving free rides. You just gotta be in the right place at the right time ;)
Zeppelins are the real rigid deal.
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 wish they offered this on more routes.
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.
When I've gone to NYC, it's honestly been less hassle to just take the bus.
But the other option is to just all get lower level coach seats next to each other - sometimes five or six is about all they have down there. Make a new friend!
I hate driving into NYC though I've done it with someone else (or because I was headed somewhere else afterwards). As you say, with multiple people, the numbers don't really pencil out--especially given it takes longer for me.
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...
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.
Part of the way this worked was that USPS was actually paying for a lot of the rail services to deliver mail (which is also what the government wanted more so than passenger rail service.) The moment USPS pulled contracts in favor of long-distance airmail the whole model went belly-up.
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.
Of course how you weigh the various factors in subjective. The more important take away is there are lots of different things in the world and you should be working on where your weaknesses are not trying to claim you are great despite them. (I'm only claiming US good here in reaction to the passenger focus - I'm aware of plenty of problems with US rail that are not on topic so I'm not giving indication of being aware. I don't know you, hopefully you are honest about the shortcomings of whatever your system is and working on fixing them where it it appropriate)
Except for the electricity.
ever heard of Japan or Switzerland or China or ...?
It’s so insane that it’s probably too cheap and we should do something else, but there are trains full of petroleum because a pipeline hasn’t been built.
And if coal is being brought to Newcastle it likely crossed the USA in a bulk train.
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
Gosh, why won't those awful railroad do something to stop their trains from suddenly and completely unpredictably swerving into automobiles?!?
There ought to be a law requiring them to put up signs to notify motorists about the hazard these big dangerous trains that can just suddenly appear out of nowhere. We should also demand bright flashing lights on the fronts of trains as well, so the public can see them at night.
Additionally, I know this might be controversial, I think they should install some kind of automatic motorized "gate" with flashing red lights anywhere that a train might flitter near a roadway. The gate would block the road any time a train is nearby to prevent anyone from getting close to the train. In my imagining, railroads would be required to post signs at these "crossing gates" with the phone number of a 24/7 staffed call center that can stop trains if a car is stuck near the gates or the gates are working.
Boy, I sure wish someone would have thought to install basic precautions like these before allowing these trains to just dart all over the place, willy-nilly.
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.
It could be so much better if we had better rail.
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.
American Indian parents didn't gain the right to decide on their children's schooling until 1978.
The recency of these atrocities never ceases to surprise me. It's incredible how long we keep up barbaric practices and then how quickly they finally come to an end.
Marriage equality in the United States is only 10 years old. Anyone remember the debates as recently as the early 2010s? How many of us have high school diplomas older than any gay marriage certificate in the United States of America? It's absolutely ridiculous to look at arguments made barely over a decade ago about a thing that is now completely normalized and benign.
It's technically true, but it hides the actual reality.
What's your source on this? What I seem to be able to find that seems consistent is:
* California was the first state to guarantee women the right to independently open bank accounts in 1862.
* Some individual banks not subject to a state mandate to do so chose to allow women (often with restrictions, conditions, e.g. relating to marital status, that did not apply to men) to open accounts independently.
* I can't find any source that indicates that being able to open independent depository accounts on the same basis as men was nationally acheived state by state as a legal right at all, much less prior to the 1900s.
* There's a common, consistently unsourced claim that the right to open an account (but not to be free of discrimination in terms, or to access credit on equal terms to men, etc.) was generally guaranteed by the states "in the 1960s"; but at least several sources expresses skepticism of this consistently unsourced claim and suggests it may be a myth originating in the fact taht Canada protected women's right to open bank accounts in 1964.
* Technically, women didn't get federal protection of a right to open bank depository accounts in their own name without discrimination in 1974, either, they got a right to equal treatment by institutions issuing credit. This had a side effect of guaranteeing equal access to those depository accounts that came with credit features, because those constituted issuing credit.
So, when did women federally get guaranteed equal treatment in bank depository accounts indepedently of those that also count as issuing credit? The same time that was guaratneed on the basis of race -- never. (There have occasionally been efforts to address this, and other permitted-disccrimination effects of the fact that banks are not included as public accommodations under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but none have passed that explicitly did so; the CFPB's power under the CFPA to address "unfair practices" was used to target race, gender, and other discrimination in financial services not subject to the ECOA or CRA, but that that was within the scope of "unfair practices" was a matter of agency rules and interpretation, not explicit in statute.)
Ask your nearest boomer woman when she actually opened her own bank account without the approval of a man. I bet the results will surprise you.
My mom couldn’t deposit her babysitting money in rural Idaho without a signature from my grandfather. She couldn’t independently buy a car with that babysitting money. Her younger brother of course could. She rightly remembers this injustice.
Regardless of the laws or when they were passed the idea of financial discrimination against women is completely outside the Overton window today but it was the norm in living memory.
This is the “actual reality”.
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.
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)
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.
EDIT: Video, 1 year old https://youtu.be/wf9OtLxha_U?t=1952
Wikipedia says that they're primarily used on the east coast, so that's probably why I've not seen one. I've ridden all over the lines west of Chicago. I'd love to do their new Chicago to Miami line sometime, so perhaps I'll have the privilege.
There’s a wall…
No wall, nothing, just you, your roommate and a toilet for you two.
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.
I know it's silly, but it was an instant mental blurt, and I can't be the only one.
Out of irrational fear...
One could even argue that all that flaring off generated some lift by updraft, making it crash softer, more slowly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OetzoO3Csj4
The thermite paint hypothesis is interesting but a bunch of hydrogen airships exploded. The Hindenburg was partly made from metal recovered from the R101. The R101 exploded on her maiden voyage.
You can all laugh at me if the inevitable occurs.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Which considering how many can travel in one might not be terribly expensive.
I've only seen one of these trains once, and it was an ordinary train. I've no idea what the cost would be.
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.
Maybe try an RV?
No idea what the cost and maintenance costs are like. Have no interest in an RV/camper.
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail
Theres also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_shuttle_train but they generally are shorter distance
For safety reasons you can't really have people sit in their cars on the train. The Eurostar etc. has extensive fire systems et. al. to make it possible.
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.
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.
What are they?
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).
YouTube exists for this video.
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.
[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
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.