Ride in Your Privately-Owned Train Cars to See North America

21 jasoncartwright 11 8/21/2025, 12:31:46 PM amtrak.com ↗

Comments (11)

vertnerd · 3m ago
I've found nowhere that any price is mentioned, so I have to assume that it's one of those "if you have to ask..." sort of things.
haunter · 1m ago
wodenokoto · 1m ago
That's what makes this interesting to me. Because I feel like, if you own an operatable train car that can be hooked up to AmTrak, then you not only don't have to ask for the pricing, but do you even have to google to see if you can hook it up?
evanb · 2m ago
[delayed]
c_moscardi · 9m ago
Riding in the family rail car like it’s 1895 (and you’re a robber baron)
woadwarrior01 · 5m ago
Reminds me of seeing Stalin's personal train car[1] at a museum in his birthplace in Gori, Georgia, a couple of years ago.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin_Museum,_Gori#/me...

nemomarx · 12m 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

LeifCarrotson · 38s ago
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.

cesaref · 3m ago
>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?

mhalle · 9m ago
Private collectors offer them for charter.

https://www.aaprco.com/

AnimalMuppet · 1m ago
They do. But I didn't see anything on there about cost. Does anyone know, even rough numbers?
terminalshort · 8m ago
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.