Sherwood Mcguire Weblog

Many wrong answers Folks, don’t make stuff up that isn’t true, when it can be easily researched.

Yes you can own a private railroad car. So many people do that there’s a trade association and a print magazine devoted to the subject: http://www.aaprco.com/Private_Varnish/varnish.html They haul all their cars to a location (changes every year) for a decadent convention!

If you want Amtrak to haul it around, you must maintain it to a standard they specify. Their price won’t kill you (typically 20x the non-discounted coach fare) but you’ll get nickel and dimed a lot by switching charges at each end. Amtrak can also do special moves and special trains, using their equipment or yours, even on non-conventional routes.

You can get the freight railroads to haul you too. Moving your coach as “just another freight car” is reasonably priced, after all, freight is their business. If you want a special movement just for you, that’s a bit more But it certainly does happen, for instance the 2007 AAPRCO convention is in Omaha and it looks like a freight railroad is actually competing with Amtrak for the business of moving coaches to Omaha.

Finding a parking place is not that hard, though you are likely to have an industry or railway museum as a neighbor. Having a “special” relationship with a short line railroad doesn’t hurt either.

This entry was posted on 土曜日, 8月 9th, 2008 at 10:38 PM and is filed under 未分類. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.