Comment by nemomarx
Comment by nemomarx 2 days ago
so how do you get a privately owned train car and get it to the tracks or etc?
from this page it sounds like you own it but Amtrak keeps it parked at their switching stations or something
Comment by nemomarx 2 days ago
so how do you get a privately owned train car and get it to the tracks or etc?
from this page it sounds like you own it but Amtrak keeps it parked at their switching stations or something
> Having worked at a railroad, I will say it’s comically easy to steal a train, for instance. They all have the same key, which is basically just a plastic rod.
> 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]
Well if you're Tintin you'll use it to catch up with the train in front and when that doesn't work, accidentally blow it up... Tintin in america is a great parody of 1930's Midwestern united states and the gangster culture of Chicago.
Do train cars ever go missing? What’s the procedure for missing rail equipment?
They actually do get lost quite often. There’s quite a bit of law around ownership of rail, cars, requirements, and maintenance and who’s in control and who’s in charge. All those numbers you see on the side of it are part of the tracking to figure out where things are.
The bad guys are driving their train when a cop train shows up in the mirrors behind their train.
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.
That looked very British. Apparently it was made for an advert for a 1980s high speed train.
Check in with the association of private railcar owners: https://www.aaprco.com/
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.
A disused car is $100-200k depending on condition, and it’d probably cost about as much to refurbish into use. An off the shelf fully outfitted luxury car can cost a million or more.
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.
You can get rail cars for free every once in a while the problem is you have to then pay to transport it to someplace you can store it. But usually there’s a rail club somewhere nearby that would love to have an addition to the collection if you’re paying to make it nice and usable.
You keep it on tracks, either your own private siding, or rent from a railroad. When you want to go you arrang with the railroad to pick it up. Railroads do this all the time - they might or might not own the cars freight is going on either way they drop it off at your siding and pick it up latter. you need to plan a head though to fit their other scheduldes. There are big costs if you are not ready when the train arrives. (that is no asking them to wait while you store groceries)
Private collectors offer them for charter.
They do. But I didn't see anything on there about cost. Does anyone know, even rough numbers?
The companies that make train cars have a way to do this, so you probably just pay them to do it as part of the price you pay them to make you train car.
>so how do you get a privately owned train car and get it to the tracks or etc?
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?