It's the most wonderful time of the year, and you know what that means? Time for heritage railways everywhere to shake us down for more money with some Christmas-themed excursions.
Post anything holiday trains related. Can be your local Polar Express, Christmas-themed model trains, Rule 34 of Santa Claus shoving a wooden train up his ass. You name it.
I'll start off with Niles Canyon Railway's Train of Lights, which I had the privilege of riding in first class of earlier today.
>be random fisherman on Florida's St. Johns River in 1980 >be on your comfy boat, catching some catfish as your Southern ancestors have been doing for generations >be anchored next to the local train trestle >Amtrak's Silver Meteor service passes by as it does every day >think nothing of it, continue fishing >suddenly a steaming fat pile of shit lads right on your fucking head >before you even have time to react to being covered in more excrement than an Indian swimming in the Ganges, the Silver Meteor disappears into the distance >go straight to the town sheriff to file a complaint >it turns out that Amtrak's Budd and Pullman-built rolling stock that was inherited from other railroads upon nationalization, are all equipped with direct-dump-on-the-tracks toilets that will literally dump piss and shit on the fucking tracks at high speed; and that this is a practice dating all the way back to the first passenger trains that has essentially remained unchanged in over 150 years >judge is no more amused than you are, win the resulting lawsuit easily >literal legal shitstorm ensues as now Amtrak is on the hook for whenever someone gets splattered by human waste from one of their trains >outfitting the entire Heritage Fleet with retention tanks that are periodically emptied at stations turns out to be too expensive, so most of the fleet is sent straight to the scrapyards as soon as they can be replaced >incoming Amfleet, Viewliner and Superliner cars all have to be redesigned from the ground-up to use retention tanks >thus the era of the classical American streamliner comes to an abrupt end >all because of a fucking toilet
Theoretically speaking, if I was an entrepreneuring billionaire and I wanted to bring back one of the great American passenger trains (Super Chief, California Zephyr, Panama Limited, Empire Builder, City of Los Angeles/San Francisco, 20th Century Limited, Broadway Limited, Powhatan Arrow, Coast Daylight, etc.) to run on a regular basis (let's put it at at least two times a month for a start), which option would be more feasible from an economic/technical/legal perspective?
1. Acquire all of the surviving rolling stock (sleepers, dining cars, dome/observation cars, baggage cars, etc.) from the original consist from private owners, heritage railways, and museums, as well as matching surviving locomotives (can be from ones different railroads since thousands of functionally and aesthetically identical EMD F and E units were sold to all Class I railroads). Renovate them as necessary to make them FRA-compliant, obtain waivers wherever possible. Put them into service as a part-luxury train, part-mobile museum.
2. Commission the construction of a replica consist. Building entirely new streamlined cars from scratch, designed to match the internal and external appearance of its original as much as possible, with changes only being made when it's literally required to make the car FRA-compliant/modern user friendly (updated wiring, HEP, power outlets at seats, WiFi support, replacing wooden paneling with MDF paneling etc.). Motive power consists of custom-built Siemens Chargers designed to resemble the original E and F units (streamlining, bulldog noses, matching paint schemes, etc.) as much as legally possible.
Why weren't these a thing more often in the heyday of railroads?
>gives freight trains an additional source of income >passengers can presumably pay for tickets less since freight trains usually run on slower schedules >allows for mixed trains without the need to pull a coach from regular passenger service >can be coupled to the back of a regular passenger train during periods of high demand, the crew will enjoy the added privacy too >lonely freight train crews will enjoy the additional company >can be outfitted as extra crew accommodation when not in revenue service
