6/10/2026 at 12:29:20 PM
You can pay Amtrak to haul your train car around[0], so you’ve just got to figure out a way to get the car from Switzerland to the US, and then you can really get around in style.by mplanchard
6/10/2026 at 1:03:00 PM
It’s possible in The Netherlands to charter a private train. I have seen large companies do this for a company retreat. It’s not even that expensive. I remember it being €5000/hour which isn’t a bad way to move 300 employees to the other side of the country.by retired
6/10/2026 at 4:21:00 PM
All European railway operators are legally required to offer this, by the way: it's an open market, so (provided there is physical space) they have to allow anyone to run their own train. Normally this means freight trains, but it also means companies like FlixTrain can attempt to compete with the large national train operators - and of course it allows for one-off charters.The only downside is that preference is given to regularly scheduled services, and the remaining space is first-come-first-serve, so on the busier routes there's a decent chance you'll have to take a large detour instead, or sit in a siding waiting for a while.
by crote
6/10/2026 at 7:14:29 PM
The infrastructure operators have to allow anyone with a train operating license on their tracks, and such license is very nontrivial to acquire.Usually you would hire a train from a train operating company, and those companies are not required to rent out their trains - although several have been set up explicitly with that goal, of course.
by gpvos
6/10/2026 at 9:43:38 PM
Back in Victorian times very rich people owned their own railway carriage which they would have hauled across country.by mrlonglong
6/11/2026 at 8:11:19 AM
Basically like it still is in the US.by gpvos
6/10/2026 at 12:38:11 PM
Make sure you get one that matches American gauge and isn't one of the the meter gauge mountain trainsby voidUpdate
6/10/2026 at 1:16:59 PM
gauge is likely easy to change. Not cheap, but Amtrak demands expensive inspections and refurbishment to run, so the cost of changing the gauge is likely fairly small compared to the other costs.by bluGill
6/10/2026 at 2:26:18 PM
Off topic, but some trains can even change gauge while in motion: https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/kq6eds/this_is_how_...by elil17
6/10/2026 at 3:13:29 PM
This is actually quite a significant technical achievement - for example, a similar project in Japan failed.Japanese Railways wanted to build a train that can run at full speed (~300 km/h) on the standard gauge (1435 mm) regular Shinkansen lines but also use the narrow gauge (1067 mm) existing lines at slower speed. Those older lines would not have to be rebuilt for the Shinkansen standard & there would still be significant time savings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_Change_Train
This failed to produce a viable train, resulting in falling back to track rebuilds or using relay trains that connect directly from Shinkansen to the local rail line on the same platform.
by m4rtink
6/11/2026 at 1:07:58 AM
They don't seem to say why it didn't work.I wonder if it was not just the change in gauge, but tolerances as well.
I got to see "Dr. Yellow" running on the shinkansen line and it checks everything out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow
I wonder if the slower-speed lines have looser tolerances.
Then maybe running the gauge-change train on the slower lines might kill the train's tolerances before it moves back to the super smooth high-speed lines.
by m463
6/10/2026 at 3:30:50 PM
Swiss trains can, but while stopped.There's a station on the main line that loads full sized cars with tanks on them onto little bougies that take them up into the mountains for training.
by jeffrallen
6/10/2026 at 5:04:42 PM
Swiss train can do it in motion, the post above is about the MOB train that can go from Montreux (meter gauge) to Interlaken (standard gauge).by mahkeiro
6/10/2026 at 10:04:02 PM
No, it isn't easy to change at all. Not unless the car was specifically designed for it, and not nearly that much of a jump. The ones that exist in real life are almost all for switching between Russian (5ft) and Standard (4ft 8.5in) gauges.To be eligible to run as part of an Amtrak train any car must past all FRA rules/guidelines, which a Euro-spec car absolutely will not without hundreds of thousands of dollars of work.
It would be MUCH cheaper to start with a car already in the US and meeting those standards. Much, much cheaper. Still not cheap, but in the realm of the practical.
by TylerE
6/10/2026 at 1:50:52 PM
Not sure if it directly helps here, but multi gaage railway cars are a thing. Iirc on some European lines, the trains switch their gauge.by user_7832
6/10/2026 at 3:34:17 PM
Yeah some overnight trains can adjust their gauge on the France/Spain border.On the China/Mongolia border on the other hand they disassemble the train, lift the train cars up one by one (with passengers inside), switch out the boogies and then reassemble. 3 hour process, you can fully sleep through it and not notice.
by dheera
6/10/2026 at 10:58:08 PM
Not notice loud banging and violent shaking underneath you? You can sleep through that, with practice, but you will notice it.by andrewshadura
6/12/2026 at 3:54:09 PM
It's actually rather quiet from the relatively sound-proof interior, and there is no noticeable shaking.These aren't American trains.
by dheera
6/10/2026 at 6:11:38 PM
If it’s taking 3 hours on a passenger train, a 5-10 minute transfer seems vastly more efficient.by lostlogin
6/10/2026 at 7:02:13 PM
Yes, but most people can't sleep through a train transferby taschmex
6/10/2026 at 7:08:14 PM
On a night train such as the Transsib that takes several days to get from A to B anyway, being able to sleep through it and not needing to lug your stuff around is usually considered more important.(Although in some cases you are woken up for border formalities.)
by gpvos
6/11/2026 at 2:51:34 AM
> (Although in some cases you are woken up for border formalities.)Yeah although you can just stay in bed for this. I've been on the train. The Chinese officials just wake you up, stamp your passport, and off you go to sleep.
Then the Mongolian officials came on, asked me a couple questions to see whether I respected their country, why I was going there, grumbled something unintelligble, stamped my passport and moved on.
Much better than getting in line for 2 hours if you ask me (which is what happened at the Bulgaria/Turkey border and the Georgia/Armenia border when I crossed those)
by dheera
6/10/2026 at 7:12:51 PM
For day trains as well, more often within Spain than on the border with France.by gpvos
6/10/2026 at 12:32:22 PM
Is there someone that does this frequently with a breakdown in costs and their experience? This sounds lit as a goal for an eccentric millionaire.by kortilla
6/10/2026 at 1:34:43 PM
There are clubs[1][2] of owners, and they'll generally rent them out to people. We looked into doing it for my bachelor party. Unfortunately, the cost is akin to renting a yacht for the same amount of time (On the order of thousands per day, minimum), so we quickly shelved that plan for an AirBnB.by dabluecaboose
6/10/2026 at 1:00:58 PM
I don't have personal experience, but I've heard it's not viable. The biggest issue is that Amtrak offers the service on a "best effort" basis, which means that if the train you want to hook up to is running late (which this frequently are due to conflicts with cargo traffic), they won't hook your car up, and you have to wait for the next train, which also might not be able to hook you up.by fineIllregister
6/11/2026 at 9:32:25 AM
Part of doing this is knowing the rules and the “real rules” - you have the car attached at an end node (Los Angeles or San Diego, say) even if your group gets on in Burbank.by bombcar
6/10/2026 at 12:53:32 PM
There is a fee schedule available: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...by skinfaxi
6/10/2026 at 1:19:32 PM
There are a few clubs that have cars that do this for a club outing. Members pay a small amount of dues, but the largest cost is labor - you are expected to help rebuild their cars. Most of the club money seems to come from renting the cars out.The above is what I gather from reading their websites. However there is no club close enough to me for joining to be reasonable and so I didn't verify the above.
by bluGill
6/10/2026 at 10:42:30 PM
Somewhere, the locomotove nomads travel the wastes of North America in their reinforced rail cars. They never speak to one another, but sometimes you can glimpse the deisel smoke of a distant train on the horizon at sunset…by Cassell
6/10/2026 at 12:40:37 PM
If I ever get to be a millionaire, it’s certainly on my list!by mplanchard
6/10/2026 at 2:44:40 PM
Buy a house first - then make another 20 million, then maybe consider this hahaby sailfast
6/10/2026 at 3:56:13 PM
"Mark, do you have live quite so relentlessly in the real world?"-- Jeremy, Peep Show
by kirubakaran
6/10/2026 at 1:01:43 PM
Someone should definitely forward this to Kim Jong Un, maybe they also make a custom armored version.by doe88
