- 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.
He was known for taking trains as well, e.g. he was a frequent Amtrak rider: https://vault.si.com/vault/1980/11/17/clear-the-tracks-for-b...