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.
Yes that's true. They try to put private cars at the front or rear of a train, but sometimes they aren't able to. So you may have the public walking through as you eat dinner. Comes with the territory {shrug}.
Train crew (conductors) always have the right to walk through the car. If your train goes into Tampa Florida for example, the train has to reverse out of the station to a wye so it can turn around. If you are the end car, the conductor will be there watching for problems, manning the emergency brake, and communicating with the engineer on their radio.
The new trainsets that Amtrak just ordered from Siemens Mobility come with cab cars, so the crew can use that to control the train and not be out in the weather (and have full gauges, etc.) The cab cars are part economy seating so if your private car is on that train, you will probably end up sandwiched between the cab car and the rest of the train and have people walking through.
Railroad companies having cab cars in Europe do sometimes run them in the middle of trains. It is not impossible, it just voids the benefits of having a cab car for the particular train and schedule. Sometimes it is acceptable in the greater scheme of scheduling and planning.
One example that comes to my mind is prisoner transports. I have seen a prisoner car (which cannot be passed through by passengers or crew, it has no doors at the ends) in front of cab car. In that sense, the cab car is being used as a normal passenger car, of course in the rear end of the train.
So, if Amtrak values private cars and privacy in such cars enough I think they can find a solution without people passing through. If the schedules require faster turnarounds, one low-tech solution is not selling tickets to the cab car.
Well for the exact same reason why it's so fun to drive a very expensive very flashy sports car through a crowded area - you get a lot of attention and everyone thinks "wow this person must be loaded". If that's your thing of course.
Same reason why rich people open up their gardens and dining halls and art collections to the public from time to time - to show off.
> The new trainsets that Amtrak just ordered from Siemens Mobility come with cab cars, so the crew can use that to control the train and not be out in the weather
So basically a caboose? Albeit more sophisticated.
Trains are actually pretty safe, but I wouldn't leave a pricey item out where someone could take it. So far as locking your stateroom door - I'd do that at night just to keep curious teens who are exploring the train out.
If you’ve got a private rail car on an Amtrak train in the first place, I’m sure you can afford enough staff for a night watch shift if you really were concerned.
Are these new trains different from the Siemens locomotives that Amtrak have been using in the Midwest for the last ~10 years? I don’t recall ever seeing anything on the back of those trains.
They've been running the Siemens Charger locomotives for a little while, and are phasing out the GE Genesis locomotives (which are at end-of-life) as new Chargers are delivered.
The new trainsets are the Siemens Venture cars. Brightline in Florida is already running a version of them - their cars are set up for high platforms only (all their stations have high platforms). The Amtrak cars will work with both high & low platforms, as the older stations on their network still have low platforms (passengers need to step up into the cars)
I wonder if it's like the double-decker passenger cars used for Metra in Chicago. These trains never change direction (like Amtrak) but just run forward (IIRC) into the city and reverse back out to the suburbs. The car on the end has a small cab where the engineer sits and controls the train when it is running reversed. From the outside the difference between that and a passenger car is pretty subtle.
Ha! I’ve always thought that all the Metra cars were identical and each one had a cab for when the train is heading into the city (Metra always configures trains so they “back into” the Chicago terminal (Union Station/Ogilvie/LaSalle).
Like the CTA (and the South Shore) trains - every single pair could be be the lead. They all have a spot for a driver (engineer?)
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.
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.
Many of the private railcars in existence today are ex-Amtrak, because when Amtrak was formed on May 1, 1971, they assumed most of the passenger rolling stock of the railroads that discharged passenger service.
Supposedly the biggest cost associated with refurbishing a car is passing the Amtrak inspection of the bogies, axles, and wheels -- I believe they have to be completely replaced at 40 years of age. When a railroad retires a car, this equipment may be close to end-of-life.
Many freight railroads still have "office-car specials" -- passenger equipment for the executives to use. Those would probably be the easiest to get up to Amtrak specs.
Trivia: Amtrak will only run trains with private railcars at a maximum speed of 110 mph. On the Northeast Corridor, private railcars are only allowed to be added to the overnight Northeast Regional train which normally travels at 125 mph -- but there's enough padding in the schedule that they can slow it down to 110 without affecting the timetable.
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!
I’ve had similar thoughts, not as a entrepreneur, but as a way to squander the lottery money on one epic party, that starts in Seattle and ends 32 hours later in LA.
I've considered chartering a transit bus from my local transit authority for a birthday party before just to tool around town in for a few hours. They only want ~$600 CAD for 3 hours ($200/hr after), and you get to choose what type of bus from their fleet you want -- a 40 foot, a 60' artic, or a double decker (with routing approval). Not a bad way to do a bar crawl or otherwise.
This is actually a great idea. No need for anyone to be the designated driver, and you can go to places not within walking distance.
A really enterprising transit agency (an oxymoron there) would create The Party Bus and promote the hell out of it. Rip out all the seats and put in couches. Special lighting. Use your imagination.
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!
Or just rent a Pullman car. I have not actually reserved one, but I always find myself searching around for charter companies when I see these types of articles.
These guys claim $2500 a day for a charter. Not sure if it is legit or if there are other fees. (I assume you then also pay all the Amtrak fees). But I do have this on my back burner to try sometime. Since they offer some 4 bedroom coaches. Would be fun to get a group together to split the cost.
I got to ride a private car for a few hours [1] thanks to a friend who rented one for a family vacation/birthday gift. The car went from Jacksonville, FL (where the private car resides), to Miami, then to Chicago via Washington, D.C. (or New York, I don't recall) then back to Jacksonville, FL. Even though he got a good price (he knows the owner), and he never mentioned the price, it wouldn't surprise me if the week vacation cost over the price of a new car (the price did cover the two "employees" that came with the car, a chef and a porter).
> 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.
If you want a shorter version that cuts out all of the flatlands, fly to Great Falls, rent a car and drop it/board at East Glacier and then ride it to Spokane.
I don’t see them shutting down all the long haul routes in the next decade or two. They would have to keep servicing the segments with shorter routes, which probably means they’d have to invest in some infrastructure, and I don’t see them getting the funding for that anytime soon. And even if that happens, they would probably save a couple of long haul routes for historic or cultural reasons. And given how popular the Empire Builder is, and how sparsely populated areas it goes through—meaning it is harder to justify the infrastructure that enables shorter routes—the Empire Builder will probably be the last long haul route to go.
I think the Empire Builder will still be there in 2040, even if it will only be a weekly run, mostly for tourists.
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!
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.
>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.
In Britain it's straightforward to charter a private train from anywhere to anywhere else. It's most commonly done by football supporter clubs, so if Liverpool FC are playing at Wembley 500 supporters can travel direct from a station in Liverpool to Wembley Stadium Station in London.
Large business also do this for company events etc.
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)
I have to imagine it's a similar scenario to pilots taking over your vessel in certain ports and passages. The job of the pilot (or the Amtrak hired crew) is that they are aligned with the port's goals and understand their scheduling and rules. I can't imagine they would want a private car moving of it's own accord operated by the owner, so you might still have to hire the Amtrak crew, and they might not be willing to operate your personal car since crew have to be trained on the locomotives. I am speculating though, I have no idea.
> 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?
Not the same, but I'm up the road from the Strasburg Railroad and they have some fancy cars you can dine in. I would love something like that from Lancaster to Philly or Philly to NYC
https://www.strasburgrailroad.com/
Fun local news fact: someone left their excavator on the tracks and one of the locomotives crashed into it Wednesday !
Cool that you made that connection - the Ferdinand Magellan is an armored rail car that was used by various presidents since FDR, and is on display at a museum near Miami. It's name when the president was on board was "U.S. Car No.1"
The famous "Dewey defeats Truman" newspaper photo was taken on it's platform.
I like trains. And I wouldn't have to be the one driving - I'd be the one sitting at my dining room table enjoying my postprandial bliss.
Downside is you're limited to where Amtrak goes (or having to hire a locomotive and getting permission from Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, etc. to use their tracks)
If I wanted to go the van-life route, I'd probably order a B-Box from Advanced RV in Cleveland. They have more interior room than a Sprinter and are better insulated. Costs about the same as a railcar and currently has a year-long wait.
post·pran·di·al | ˌpōs(t)ˈprandēəl |
adjective
formal or humorous during or relating to the period after dinner or lunch: we were jolted from our postprandial torpor.
• Medicine occurring after a meal: an annual postprandial blood glucose test.
ORIGIN
early 19th century: from post- ‘after’ + Latin prandium ‘a meal’ + -al.
If you're hiring chefs and stuff for your train car, buying a high end motorcoach and hiring a driver seems superior and more affordable in basically every other way.
There’s inherent safety built into this dream. Van life in the woods sounds dangerous. Your train is traveling at a certain speed at all times on a route that’s operated by professionals. You are also not utterly alone and there is a company that can provide some customer support. You’ll never have to make a stop at a shady motel or gas station.
Van life is a first class ticket to becoming a tidbit in serial killers life story.
I live the RV life. Before this I camped in a rooftop tent mounted to my truck. The woods are among the least dangerous places you can go. But also, shocking as this is, you can take your truck or van to dense urban areas if you desire. There is little need for "customer support" when you are driving your own vehicle. Occasionally you get repair problems but mechanics are readily available in even small towns. Van life is not that dramatic.
Funny, I own a campervan and have driven all up and down the west coast. The one single time I had something weird happen, it was in the middle of nowhere in a forest in Oregon. Parked on the side of the dirt road in a little side road off the main road. Was sound asleep when I heard a banging on the door. Must have been 3am or something... I got up and peered out the window covers and saw a guy standing there yelling at me to open the door. It was freezing cold out and he was wearing not much clothes for how cold it was. He looked like he had been sleeping in the forest for quite some time (dirty, long hair, beard). I yelled back at him no way that I was going to open the door and he yelled something back at me and stormed off. Didn't hear anything from him again. Grabbed a knife to keep it close and went back to bed. That was one freaky weird experience. I thought about driving off, but didn't want to try to find another place to park in the middle of the night and it seemed like he was gone so I just let it go.
That is indeed weird but could even more easily happen in downtown Portland as in the middle of the woods. I definitely think you need to maintain situational awareness and carry protection, but that is true of any kind of travel.
I also spent 2 years living on a motorbike went 15k km all over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos... some of the most remote places... never once had an issue with anyone.
That said, in this case, I wasn't sleep out in the middle of a forest but I do have friends who do it more camping style and they haven't had issues.
I guess it is all just luck of the draw (or some say, karma).
Ever use that roof top tent in urban areas? How hard is that?
Where I live you can park on the street for 48 hours. I suspect, however, that you can’t sleep there. You would get a knock at the very least. So, I’ve considered an incognito van that looks like a work truck. But, I wonder if you could just pop up a roof tent and sleep wherever.
I’m mostly talking about city center here. As an example, I’d love to do this in neighborhoods in CA (where locals are already street parking).
> Ever use that roof top tent in urban areas? How hard is that?
In a Walmart parking lot, yeah. I generally use Austin as my base, and in Austin, people sleep in normal tents all over the place. Rarely are they kicked out. If you're trying to park in a well-to-do neighborhood, it's possible you'll get called out for it, but quite likely if you're quiet and clean and gone the next day no one will say anything. Often, I see the big recreational vans when I'm traveling. People park them and sleep in them everywhere. As long as you're not staying multiple nights in a row in the same place, you're generally not going to bother anyone (they will usually assume you're just resting from travel).
But honestly, state & national parks are usually the way to go, particularly for tents. Sometimes it's free, sometimes it's a $5 per night honor system deposit envelope, occasionally it's a park ranger registration, depending on the location. And you don't always have to travel far off a main highway to get to a decent campsite, there's tons of spots if you look.
Unless local law forbids Walmart allows free camping. There are also truck stops all over that will let RVs camp overnight (they might object to a slide out). Of course there are campgrounds all over as well.
You won't find much downtown, but get out just a little and there are options.
I've travelled on a few luxury multi-day train trips* and also lived for months out of a bus, camping in forests, etc. Both have felt very safe to me. People are unnecessarily paranoid about camping in forests! The best aspect of the train trips are catered food/drink, not having to drive and otherwise sitting in your cabin with a book. Obviously you don't have the flexibility of stopping, backtracking or deviating as you wish. The luxury train trips I linked below have excursions via bus to the scenic highlights.
Reading a book in your train cabin or the bar/lounge is nice enough, but so is parking somewhere with a view and the windows open, and lazing around on the bed/couch in your bus/van. e.g., we recently free-camped on the rim of a canyon: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkSY_0IODqd/
The best option IMO is a mid-scale (100pax) expedition cruise like this: https://coralexpeditions.com/au/destinations/the-kimberley/k... You get a larger room, amazing changing scenery often from a private balcony, superior expeditions, catered meals, science lectures, etc. It is superb, if you can justify paying the $1k/night - similar pricepoint to the rail trips.
How would you compare the luxury multi-day train trips to a (sea) cruise ?
I am generally interested in trying out the multi-day train, I done many overnight sleep trains in the UK. I like cruises, (like you said not having to drive siting with a book and watching the next destination get closer).
I haven't done a sea cruise, other than on a freighter from Shanghai to Hong Kong back in the early 90s: not luxury! I've also done overnight trains through Asia/India/etc which are a great experience, but nothing luxury about them (triple storey bunks, people sleeping in the aisles).
The train/cruise trips I linked have been free/contra as I'm a photographer, but in each case I've largely had the same experience as a passenger, just without feeling a need to measure my enjoyment against the cost. The Kimberley trip with Coral Expeditions is comfortably at the top - you're in and out of inlets and amongst islands so the views are always interesting and changing, the landings via Zodiacs are to beautiful/historic places. Catered meals, drinks with views, cloudless weather every day, adventurous and interesting people to meet and eat with at meals. The optional afternoon lectures might be about exploration history, indigenous art, animals and environments, by seriously experienced guides. There's more variety in strolling the ship - bridge and engine room tours as well. And 100pax is a great size because you know everyone by name by the end, unless you've tried to avoid it you've had a meal with everyone including the captain, etc.
Of the Journey Beyond trips, Great Southern is the best of the two I've done. Same train as The Ghan, but it's a newer trip so the off-train wine/dine is ramped up and impressive (we photographed the second-ever trip and had the designer of the route/locations along with us). The food and drink is relentless - you eat and drink at wineries, lunch in an old gaol, out beside the beach, amongst mountains, etc. On train, you're typically in the dining carriage (2-4 person tables), the bar/lounge where you can meet other passengers, or in your small room. The base cabin is a couch which turned into a top/bottom bunk; higher class option has a queen murphy bed. On those trains, not a single window in the passenger areas is openable, so it's a bit stuffier.
The cruise rooms were far larger, king-size beds, excellent en suites, a completely comfortable and usable desk, balcony, etc. Lying on the bed with a book or working at the desk with the balcony doors open to the breeze and passing ocean was just serene. At meals, there were tables for 4-10 people and you'd just ask to join any available spots; even for an introvert, you inevitably meet interesting people. The sorts of people who are on a $1k/night expedition cruise are typically well-travelled, have interesting jobs, etc. Over 60 meals, even the dullest people I sat with were a decent, friendly couple who I was happy to talk with.
The rail trips are great, but feel a bit more contained and herded. 2-3 nights feels like it's over quite quickly too. Both formats typically attract older clientele, though there were solo 40-50s on our trips, and I find all ages fun to engage with anyway. Meals on the rail trip were probably better; The Ghan actually does a nice thing where the meals are relevant to the area you're passing through. So as you leave South Australia you're eating seafood but by the time you're in the Northern Territory, it's barramundi, macadamias, mango, buffalo, etc.
I think the comparison being made is why restrict yourself to a rail line when you can buy a huge bus with a driver and private chef and have them drive you anywhere you want.
It really isn't about the destination. If it were, one would just fly. To me, the elegance of rail is in its ability to travel through more secluded areas, to do so quietly, and to afford a person enough space to kick back without the need for a seatbelt.
The view as well. It’s not a requirement of trains vs trucking but due to history train tracks go through many more scenic routes that are built or grown over, and aren’t 3-6 lane highways blasted through nature.
You also don’t stop and go as much. With a bus you stop at every stop light in every suburb you drive through and speed changes all the time. A train makes a few predictable very manageable stops.
You have more room, mostly. A Prevost bus conversion is 45 feet long while a railcar is 80-ish feet long (less a few feet for the vestibule and/or rear platform). The rail car is wider, except when you park your bus and put the slide-outs out.
Of course, travel options are significantly broader with an RV since paved roads go everywhere. However you can't take an RV into some cities in the northeast - I know that Washington DC and Baltimore have banned them from their streets. Whereas Amtrak takes you right into the city center.
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.
This particular car sleeps 8, and it cost us less than 4 couples taking a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles via the Panama Canal, and less than booking a private jet that seats 8, but more than first class airfare for 8 cross-country.
And it also depends on whether they find someone to book (some subset of) the return trip that will start within a day or two of your arrival; otherwise you have to cover their Amtrak fee for the dead-head return. I’m told there’s a network of enthusiasts who watch for such possibilities. Rather, two networks, who hate each other for no discernible reason. Or that’s how I understood it, as an outsider getting a glimpse of an obscure but intense sub-culture.
Since drfuchs hasn't answered yet, here's a figure from 2011:
"Not up for chartering your own car? Then perhaps you'd like to take part in an arranged tour. There are several vendors that offer trips on private varnishes. For example, Palm Leaf LLC is offering a week-long trip by train from Los Angeles to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. While in New Orleans you can continue to use the train as your hotel, parked right in the middle of the action. The tariff? $2,995 per person for a single room, including meals while in motion."
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.
You always have a sense of a ton of money sloshing around in these sorts of things; in college we used to get symphony orchestras to fly our group out to collaborate on performances. But, it's a different matter to see it enumerated.
For anyone not wanting to read through, I found ~$160,000 in private train car payments, and somewhere around $40,000 in fees and tickets to Amtrak.
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.
I always feel like Software licenses are a different beast. For example, 300k in Windows license costs might not be mulch out of a 50M budget, but it is much when you think about the fact that these costs could also be zero.
I'm absolutely pro-FOSS but also want to point out that just the licence cost comparison here isn't too meaningful. Licence + maintenance cost fould be a much more sensible figure (and much less likely to be zero).
That is true. But paying for commercial software doesn't free you from having to maintain said software. So while some software might be easier to maintain than other, I think it is fair to just compare the license prices if you have no additional insight into the organization and how their IT operates.
What free software offers the enterprise features of Windows? AFAIK not even Red Hat is anywhere close to the central management features of Windows domains. Samba on Linux/Mac is severely backwards and using it is pain.
I think you'll find your experience here is outdated. There are a few good tools for managing Linux systems - puppeteer is one. What sorry if features are you missing?
As for Samba, Gnome has good client built in to the file browser. But I'd have to ask why you're using Samba at all. There are much better network filesystems in the Linux world that don't come with all the legacy cruft and undocumented idiosyncrasies that are part of the SMB protocol. They're harder to set up on Windows, but that shouldn't be a problem if you standardize on Linux.
Samba - or to be precise MS AD is not just about files. On Linux it's limited to files and that's exactly the problem I'm talking about. On Mac it's at least able to share certificates and some basic settings now - still not ideal though.
Actually with modern clouds like OneDrive it's not about files at all, I haven't seen network drives being used for a decade. It's about privileges to various resources available within the corporate network and about what you can't do with your work computer, and about having the computer auto-configure to play with all the resources on corporate network.
It's about setting detailed access level based on AD groups - including user applications, not just networked drives or whatever. Permissions to CRM/ERP systems, document management systems etc. Detailed as much as "this user can only see contracts and invoices assigned to the London branch".
I open my computer and I immediately see the printer that's nearest to me as the first printer in the list. Access to it is authenticated and authorized (with no additional password prompts). I can simply choose a document from SharePoint and send it right there, walk over there and slap my chip card on it and have it printed. It's part of my system's print queue but if I switch computers in the meantime I can still work with the queue item there.
I scan a document and it goes directly to my OneDrive which is automatically connected to whatever computer I sit at as soon as I log in, regardless of me using a random terminal that's been sitting in whatever office I'm visiting.
I'm unable to break anything because there is no root to login to, nobody ever uses sudo on the computer, nobody ever needs admin privileges on it (harder to do with devs but common for all other professions). If an app needs to be added the computer is remotely reimaged from an image with the app added (this requires a one-setting change by the admin, nothing else). No user settings or files go missing in the process.
Corporate VPN, firewall, proxy servers, wifi network, wired network - all of it requires auth. The system just takes my user certificate and just works with it all by itself. Nothing is available without auth, nothing is unencrypted.
Building this kind of system with Microsoft products is as easy as installing a few apps on the corporate server machine. I literally learned how to do it when I was 12 and couldn't speak English yet.
Building it with Linux - well I am pretty skilled with Linux admin (as much as you'd expect someone who used it as their primary system for 15 years and hosts their own websites etc) but I can't even imagine where to begin.
Using puppeteer to connect to individual machines and turn options there - that's crazy. Enterprise Windows are fully declarative. And using separate systems to manage Windows/Mac and Linux - that's crazy. Apple is doing what it can to support MS AD - if Linux wants to be a special case, it's going to remain a special case.
Unix systems were doing all of this 30 years ago. (I can almost feel all the old Sun Microsystems employees rolling their eyes.) It's literally why NFS and NIS (replaced by LDAP before Active Directory released) existed. But Unix != Linux, the popular parts of the Linux ecosystem don't cater to this, and trajectory continues to diverge away.
Almost all long distance Amtrak routes deviate quite far from civilization. Once you’re out of the cities and away from a highway you get cell pockets.
If you can afford a private rail car I'm sure you can also afford a peplink router with dual wan interface, and one of the two way going to starlink, the other to a cradlepoint LTE modem and antenna system for T-Mobile or Verizon.
We had a very generous group of donors make this once-in-a-lifetime event possible and entirely free for every teenager on board.
The team also really made it happen. It was incredibly difficult to organize, and every person involved went far above and beyond any normal expectation to make the Zephyr so special.
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].
There have also been occasions where Museums or clubs owning Steam Locos bid for contracts hauling freight and provide the service using their Steamers. Example here where they supply a railway construction site [1] or here [2] were some fertiliser is pulled.
But the railway museum runs a historic train hourly from Utrecht Centraal (I think the largest station in the country) to their museum. That's also a strange sight to see passing by at crossings.
While it isn't ordinary operating procedure, it's not exactly one-off either. It has happened a couple times already. At least once in combination with a historic diesel train as well.
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.
>The housing market might turn the world into Snowpiercer
I don't get it. Houses become so expensive that the last remnants of humanity has to live on a train? Isn't this a "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" situation?
Wouldn't even need to pay me to do it. The only thing stopping me is a lack of a private train car and presumably the significant expense of running it :(
So its a privately owned and operated rail car, that lots of people can group together with and pay the total cost of by individually paying a smaller part of it, like some sort of ... publicly accessible private transportation ... I think you might be on to something!
Ok, you're subscriber number one then. Anyone else? I'm completely serious. Private Varnish (ie: private railcars) have always been something I love. It would be a hoot to live in one with my fam for a year (if I can convince them).
I'm all on this for actually helping physically do this (even for loose definitions of physical, like run a website haha, but I'd imagine someone on HN restoring a train carriage could manage a Wix/SquareSpace/etc site by themselves)... I've wanted to build a steam engine since I was a kid, I thought it would be amazing to design a stupidly modern steam engine and break the world records with it, and this, while this is not a steam engine, it is honestly the closest I'll probably get to any of that dream given how impractical it is ...
That sort of backs up my point though, the majority (all but one!) of the projects are rebuilding traditional steam engines for heritage/historical reasons. The one advanced/modern project was abandoned for lack of interest and done by a private company.
Also I’m in Western Australia… One of the two Australian projects on that page (based in Victoria) no longer has a functioning web page, which is not a good sign given the cost of a website compared to rent for a workshop big enough for a steam engine. The other project is making slow progress over the last decade building a replica of a late 19th century design which while cool and I hope they eventually finish it, doesn’t stoke the fires of my imagination enough to uproot my entire life to move closer so I can physically help make it happen.
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.
Thank you for sharing this. I have many times seen the Shiki-Shima (“Four-season Island”) head north from Tokyo past where I used to live and wondered just what it was that I was observing. Up until now I thought it was a private train and I could have sworn that I spotted a piano in the lounge each time it passed.
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.”
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's infuriating actually. There are plenty of historic railroad societies that own track around the US where people can take their railcars to be driven around. Amtrak has a credibility problem because of its reputation for being unreliable, and this affects public perception of passenger rail transit overall and how worthwhile it is to invest in 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.
Amtrak only owns ~630 miles of tracks out of the 21,000 it uses, and basically all of that 630 is in the North East. This is definitely Amtrak's best area, although that's partially because of the amount of people going between Boston/NYC/Philadelphia/DC; the rest of the US doesn't have as many big cities that close together.
> multi-state 1000km trip
If you get on I-5 North in Los Angeles and start driving, 1000km later you'll still be in California.
On the small portion of the US railway network that Amtrak owns, its quite successful, the Northeast Corridor is most likely profitable (and probably the only profitable part of the Amtrak system).
Sure I can. On the same track you have many different companies operating their own lines, combined multi-operatoe lines, as well as irregular connections (again single and multiple operators combined).
I've seen multiple operators (some of them entirely private, some entirely state-owned corporations, some combinations) combine their trains on an EuroCity-labelled line more than a few times.
I have a friend who is working on founding his own train company and he's actually providing services to the state-owned corporations where they have him operate their wagons in his combined train, with his own locomotive. He operated a major intercity line several times this way (they use his service when there's a problem on the regular route) - and it stopped to recombine several times. I've personally been on a train ride that combined his private for-fun party wagon with an EC train.
It sounds like your sentiment is part of the same problem in Europe - I mean you said it yourself, you saw delays on these combo trains.
Luckily Europe has high speed rail which does not allow your friend's party wagon to disrupt the schedule. You might imagine a TGV or ICE picking it up, but I don't think it will ever happen.
That's entirely up to the company operating that ICE or TGV train. Not saying it's going to happen - many companies don't let other's wagons on their trains. But many do.
BTW so far my friend's train was never delayed by his own fault, not sure what problem you're talking about - there's no problem, his train had usually the lowest priority (it costs money to have higher priority) so he's the one waiting for "normal" trains.
When I said there are delays, I meant the "normal" trains primarily. But sure, as he increases operation it's going to happen to him too.
Improve schedule planning and Amtrak won't have problems too.
When Richard Anderson was the CEO, Amtrak was on track to achieve profitability by 2020. Then the pandemic happened, and then the bipartisan infrastructure bill basically removed all the language from the law that authorizes Amtrak about minimizing the cost to the taxpayer, so that never came to fruition.
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.
Amtrak wanted to end their private car services[1], but instead, just raised the price. There used to be "Private Varnish" magazine, but it's been discontinued.[2]
At one time, it was quite cheap to park a private railroad car at many downtown passenger railroad stations, because they were way underutilized and had much empty track. Not so much any more.
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.
In Moscow, there's a city train line called MCC (Moscow Central Circle) which you can hop on for around $1 and just sit there all day. There are power sockets and Wi-Fi, and on stations there are vending machines with snacks and coffee. It's cozy and helps concentrate on things (for me at least).
For the train geeks: the trains used there are a regional version of Siemens Desiro, called Lastochka which is Russian for the bird swallow.
This isn't as comfortable as you might think. Most of the passenger rail in the US is old and not very smooth. Riding on Amtrak for long distances is not as nice as say, riding on high-speed rail or a local metro like Chicago. The rail cars frequently sway left and right. I say this as a proponent of trains and high speed rail.
> Typical pricing for a trip is along the lines of a high-end cruise. On average, the all-inclusive costs typically can run between $2,500 and $7,000 or more per car per day. But remember, a rail car may accommodate 6, 8, 10, 20 people or more.
They have several for sale linked from the article page, for instance a 1989 diner car which I think would have everything you'd need for an office, add a bed, food, bathroom, nice big windows.
They are often railworthy but they may not be up to Amtrak's standards. However, if you find a museum with a locomotive and cars; you can often hire them to run you someplace. But you may be pulled by a freight loco.
How Much Does a New Railcar Cost to Buy?
The cost of a train car varies depending on the type of car and its features.
For example, a passenger train car may cost more than a freight train car. The
cost also depends on the train car’s brand, model, and year. On average, a
train car costs between $100,000 and $200,000.
How Much Does it Cost to Buy an Old Railroad Car?
If you’re interested in purchasing an old rail car, there are a few things you
need to know. First, it’s essential to know how much money you’re willing to
spend. Rail cars can vary significantly in price, depending on their age,
condition, and amenities. For example, an older car might cost less than
$5,000, while a newer model with more features could cost upwards of $50,000.
I've actually been looking into refurbishing a newer railcar and kitting it out much more like a home. There's a lot you can do and equipment like older Metra gallery cars along with more recent commuter cars are an excellent starting point.
This seems really neat, actually. While it seems it would be a bit more expensive than you'd think, if you loved railroads then it would be a cool thing to own.
I guess the only restriction would be having to hook into an Amtrak train/route, but otherwise I think traveling North America by rail could be pretty interesting.
My cost comment comes from seeing cars "surplus" for a few thousand dollars, but I'm guessing they might need significant upgrades to be eligible to hook up to Amtrak, not to mention being comfortable for the owner.
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