Traveling in Style

It is Railroad Days this weekend in Galesburg. I will admit it is one of the times I work hard at not going to town. I'm not a fan of the festival and in general try to avoid crowds. It does however provide an opportunity almost every year to see a private rail car go through town. It got me wondering how expensive this endeavor is. So we will explore this for a bit.

The American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners, Inc is the group many of these individuals belong to and it provides some information as to what it can cost. It is one of those cases where you can say, if you have to ask you can't afford it. Personal rail cars are referred to as Private Varnish. In the late 1800's private rail cars were made of wood and required continual exterior maintenance. The coating of high gloss varnish made the cars stand out and the public knew from the shine on the cars that they were private cars. It spawned the use of the term Private Varnish.

There are two ways to become a private rail car owner. First you can buy a car that is Amtrak approved. It will be ready for use immediately. The second way is to buy a car that needs to be refurbished. If you purchase an Amtrak approved car it must be reinspected and brought up to current standards. The cost of an approved car begins at about $200,000 and goes up from there. In some cases way up. There are some private cars in the $1,000,000+ category. If you want to have a car refurbished and it is best to have a certified shop do the work. It is reasonable to expect the work to take one to five years depending on the extent of the work. The cost to refurbish if you do the work yourself is between $150,000 and $500,000. When your car is done you have to have somewhere to store it. Those costs run a minimum of $500 per month. You still haven't connected your car to a train. Amtrak has an annual Activation charge of $250 per car. There is a $1,000 minimum for any trip and a charge of $2.10 per mile. A trip from Washington DC to Chicago would run about $1,600 not including crew costs or the $500 to $1,800 that are charged to move the car to the station to be attached to the Amtrak train. So the good news is that you don't have to buy a private car. They are available for rent and can generally be had for about $4,000 per day.

So when you see one of those cars go by just take a minute and think about how expensive that trip is for them. You are not looking at how the other half live. You are looking at someone who is in the upper one tenth of one percent of the population. So maybe the guys with their private jets get where they are going faster. The guy in the private rail car gets there with way more style. If they want to spend their money that way what is it to me? Nothing really, I just enjoy a brief view of the outside of their expensive ride. That is good enough for me.