Comment by trillic
Comment by trillic 2 days ago
If you have to ask you can't afford it.
Comment by trillic 2 days ago
If you have to ask you can't afford it.
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.
Depending on how long ago it was, it could've been John Madden. Not a tycoon, but the first guy that pops into my head re: sports who refused to fly.
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.
I think the Cardinal is a popular route for a lot of those guys. It’s the scenic way to Chicago. Instead of going from NYC and sort of hugging the south shore of the Great Lakes, it goes south to Dc, then to Charlottesville and over the old C&O route over the Appalachians through Charleston, WV and on along the Ohio river to Cincinnati and then eventually Chicago.
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.
More like an old Winnebago that wasn't built to a price point (which is both good and bad)
Kind of. You don't have to worry about foundations, or sewer lines or frost heaves or masonry. So there are advantages.
But I mean, just look what a nice one is like inside.
Something like this one (Which I've actually been in)
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.
In my experience the people who can afford everything are often the ones looking to pay the least at all times.