Wednesday, January 07, 2015

taking the train

We read 'The Christmas Train' by David Baldacci for our book group and it is rather of an inspiring story to get one to take the train on a long trip. As a result, I decided to do a bit of digging to go on a long train trip, and this is what I found.

To travel from my city to Toronto, then to Vancouver, then to Los Angeles, then to Chicago, then to New York, and then back home again would cost about 1150$ for one person to travel in a coach seat the whole way. For the long stretches (Toronto-Vancouver, Vancouver-LA, LA-Chicago and Chicago-NY) the person traveling could get a bedroom on all of those long sections and now the price for the whole trip is about 5200$.

Then it got me to thinking about chartering a rail car and doing the same trip, so that I don't ever have to switch where I am sleeping; the train car itself would just get changed to the different trains. I found AAPRCO that gives a lot of information about owning a rail car, but I couldn't really find anywhere that I could custom build a charter trip to get the price for it.

But taking it from there, I wonder about the idea of using a rail car as a retirement plan. What if a small group of retirees pooled resources together to have built a custom railcar that has all of the amenities we could wish for. Then it would simply be a matter of coordinating with various rail companies to be dropped off at sidings and as we feel like it, get moved to a different location.

Going a step further, if I won that 50,000,000$ lottery, why not commission a company like Bombardier to build a few dozen self contained retirement rail cars and then sell shares in them to retirees.

I can keep going...

After getting the few dozen retirement rail cars and getting them populated by retirees, the next step is to find sidings in or near cities that we can stop at, and in addition, out in the country side, build some new sidings that are specific holding stops for these retirement rail cars so that as a resting stop, the cost is less. At these ones that are built, add some facilities that help to replenish the supplies of the retirement rail cars.

Anyhow, it is an idea.

3 comments:

Zhoen said...

Very appealing, although I can also see a number of difficulties. Maybe a Tiny House railcar that can be hooked up intermittently. Sure better than RVs.

Debstar said...

Of course when you win that $50 mill you could just go travelling and not worry about making more money.

meshie said...

it is a terribly romantic idea to buy your own railway car and travel around the continent with loved ones and friends. I like the idea alot.