Comment by dynm 2 days ago
If you're wondering the most obvious thing:
- 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...
It’s also called “hotel” power and is provided by the locomotive, but separate from “needed to run” power. A train can run with just air and the physical connection, hotel comes with the big “other cable” connected.
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.
It's from the loco which in the US almost exclusively used electric propulsion, just for capex vs. opex balance sheet gaming reasons mostly (except in and around NYC (tunnels) and some very recent electrification efforts (I think bright line in FL was looking at electrifying some trains? Something recently did and improved performance that way.) sourced from medium speed diesel generators housed in the loco.
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.
In my experience the people who can afford everything are often the ones looking to pay the least at all times.
The people doing this at this point are mostly rich rail enthusiasts. No one is doing this to actually get around. The most popular routes are the more scenic ones, like through the mountains. They’re not hitching a car into the Acela to go from NYC to Boston.
I'm not sure that is true — I mean the rich part is true, but not necessarily the rail enthusiast part. One of the times we took the California Zephyr there was a private car on the end that I understood to be some sports-team tycoon who was more or less afraid of flying.
And rail car enthusiast associations, which usually consist of passionate but not very rich people - they will pool money together to afford a trip like this every now and then, so usually they'll go "ok we got 20k in membership fees this quarter, where can we go with this money" - so yeah, it will absolutely matter to them.
The nice ones are almost all old business cars. The business car was used by the railroads for senior executives to move around their systems, and hold meetings.. usually contain a couple of executive bedrooms, a staff bedroom (they typically carried a cook and a steward, although the roles were sometimes combined). The rear half or so of the car is an open plan lounge/meeting room.
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.
so basically all the problems of buying a castle or old chateau, but on wheels.
Not really, you just need to get more people. The fanciest car holds 8, other cars hold 20 to 70 people. So if you divide the price the people it's not that bad.
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.
This is a cliche. Those rich enough that don't have to ask oftentimes pay less than those who are not rich enough.
Head End Power (HEP) is the electrical power supplied from the locomotive to the passenger cars for lighting, heating, air conditioning and other amenities - essentially the "hotel load" that keeps your private car functioning while attached to the train.