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Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

148 points by kisamoto 3 days ago | 75 comments

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.

[0]: https://www.amtrak.com/privately-owned-rail-cars

voidUpdate 7 hours ago

Make sure you get one that matches American gauge and isn't one of the the meter gauge mountain trains

bluGill 7 hours ago

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.

elil17 6 hours ago

Off topic, but some trains can even change gauge while in motion: https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/kq6eds/this_is_how_...

m4rtink 5 hours ago

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.

jeffrallen 4 hours ago

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.

mahkeiro 3 hours ago

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).

user_7832 6 hours ago

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.

dheera 4 hours ago

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.

gpvos 18 minutes ago

For day trains as well, more often within Spain than on the border with France.

lostlogin 2 hours ago

If it’s taking 3 hours on a passenger train, a 5-10 minute transfer seems vastly more efficient.

taschmex 29 minutes ago

Yes, but most people can't sleep through a train transfer

gpvos 23 minutes ago

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.)

retired 7 hours ago

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.

crote 4 hours ago

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.

gpvos 17 minutes ago

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 some have been set up explicitly with that goal, of course.

kortilla 7 hours ago

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.

dabluecaboose 6 hours ago

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.

[1] https://www.aaprco.com/

[2] https://www.rpca.com/

fineIllregister 7 hours ago

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.

bluGill 7 hours ago

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.

skinfaxi 7 hours ago

There is a fee schedule available: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

mplanchard 7 hours ago

If I ever get to be a millionaire, it’s certainly on my list!

sailfast 5 hours ago

Buy a house first - then make another 20 million, then maybe consider this haha

kirubakaran 4 hours ago

"Mark, do you have live quite so relentlessly in the real world?"

-- Jeremy, Peep Show

doe88 7 hours ago

Someone should definitely forward this to Kim Jong Un, maybe they also make a custom armored version.

mwexler 7 hours ago

I just want the clocks. Mondaine tries, but they aren't the same. That 58.5 second rotation then pause is quite clever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock

theqwxas 5 hours ago

Mondaine also sells their Stop2Go collection, which is specifically designed to do the pause at 58 seconds

https://mondaine.com/collections/stop2go-watches

lqet 4 hours ago

Here is an original from a German station (in the design of the 1950ies):

https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/bahnhofsuhr/343129269...

fortran77 33 minutes ago

I remember when Apple just went and stole the Swiss railway clocks. See: https://www.techmonitor.ai/technology/apple-pays-21mn-to-swi...

hydrogen7800 6 hours ago

After my first visit to Switzerland, I knew I needed one of those clocks for my home. Unfortunately the ones available are cheap (though expensive) and don't have the second hand dwell at the top of each minute.

Levitating 6 hours ago

I always thought I was just imagine a pause at the full minute.

jeffrallen 4 hours ago

Wait for it, wait for it... Click.

Aaaah.

game_the0ry 6 hours ago

The central clock dependency is cool, but I wonder is there were any problems with latency -- like does the centralized electrical impulse reach a train station 10km away and another one at 20km at the same time? Did they factor that in?

bauruine 6 hours ago

Isn't that propagating with around the speed of light? Switzerland is only about 1 light ms wide so even if they only have one master clock instead of one per train station the latency should be negligible especially in the 1950s.

bluGill 6 hours ago

The speed of light is copper wires is fast enough that you don't need to factor this in. At least not for human purposes.

madaxe_again 6 hours ago

I know the Swiss are known for punctuality and timekeeping, but I don’t think anyone is going to notice a 33μs delay to their train.

xattt 7 hours ago

A similar option is available in North America (1).

Very niche, and it’s run by Larry Paikin, 93-year-old father of legendary Canadian journalist Steve Paikin.

(1) http://www.locomotives.ca

fidotron 7 hours ago

Curse you. Now I have a new objective in life.

For those of this persuasion in the Montreal area we have https://exporail.org

tacostakohashi 7 hours ago

What a charming little website!

Svip 7 hours ago

If I was filthy rich, I'd buy a plot of land near a railway line (that is at least attached to the main lines), build my own siding, and buy one of DSB's IC3 MUs[0], maybe also an IR4 MU[1], so they can together ride on electrified and non-electrified tracks. Then refurbish their interior, install as many signal compatibility systems, and, for the IR4, have it support as many overhead voltage systems as possible. I have a soft spot for the MF/ER class trains.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSB_Class_MF [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSB_Class_MF#IR4_%22InterRegio...

james_pm 6 hours ago

That is exactly how the Halton County Railway Museum near Toronto came to be. A bunch of dudes bought an old streetcar (tram) to save it from the scrappers and built a track on some property to have fun driving it around. https://hcry.org/

bluGill 7 hours ago

Most people do this as part of a club. You join the club and combine everyone's money to buy the things needed, and then everyone in the club can enjoy it.

embedding-shape 3 hours ago

"Clubs" as a thing is such a great concept, and if you feel like there is some humanity missing because of all the things going on, they're real places with lots of humans and humanity in them. They work great for lots of things, from trains, computing, music to boats, puppets, gardening and whatever else. If there is no club where you live, you'll surely find at least one other member if you start it yourself :)

Kaliboy 2 hours ago

I have 13 acres. My dream is to have a homebuilt rail system around the land. Probably can't afford professional stuff so I'll have to get creative.

lostlogin 2 hours ago

There is a tourist attraction here in New Zealand that started its life as a way for a potter, Barry Brickell, to get his clay and fuel for the kilns to his studio. It’s a beautiful spot, particularly if you manage to avoid a busy time.

I’m sure there are other mini ones out there.

https://drivingcreek.nz/activities/driving-creek-railway-tou...

AnimalMuppet 7 hours ago

Or maybe donate it to the Illinois Railway Museum (irm.org) so that they could run it for more people than just yourself.

user_7832 6 hours ago

If we're doing hypotheticals, why not both?

Stevvo 59 minutes ago

The prices are really quite good for a country where everything is so expensive. Only 3000 for an aluminium rail car. Probably the scrap metal value is higher than 3000, although you could spend far more than 3000 transporting it to the scrap yard.

999900000999 6 hours ago

If I was rich I’d go to a small town in a developing country and create a monorail. I’d buy up a 4km by 4km plot of land and create a car free city ( aside from emergency vehicles).

Free public transport, bikes and shoes for everyone

stevekemp 2 hours ago

I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and, by gum, it put them on the map!

kylehotchkiss 3 hours ago

Mumbai has a Monorail.

How has that worked out?

999900000999 13 minutes ago

They don’t scale.

The Disneyland one is nice.

panick21_ 6 hours ago

Monorails suck and are properity garabage. Is a recepy for bad transit at increase cost.

Zopieux 3 hours ago

This. The general concept of "terrible public transport tech disguising as a good & novel idea" has a name: gadgetbahn.

ez_mmk 7 hours ago

If anyone is looking for a german train: https://www.db-gebrauchtzug.de

herbst 7 hours ago

Some things are actually interesting and useable (as kinda normal human being, without the need for a new bridge or train)

adityamwagh 2 hours ago

They are selling a bridge??

https://sbbresale.ch/offers/6a19702ea15ad61283c952ae

PeterStuer 6 hours ago

Unfortunately no HO scale, so that's a pass for me.

thazework 4 hours ago

thought these would be NFTs but i guess we're not in 2021

voidUpdate 7 hours ago

Is it pickup only, or do they deliver as well?

bluGill 7 hours ago

They can likely arrange delivery for a fee, you would need to ask.

MrBuddyCasino 7 hours ago

When SBB has a bridge to sell you, you should pick it up in person.

wongarsu 7 hours ago

When London Bridge was sold in the 1960s it was also on the buyer to pick it up from its original location and transport it to the US

stevekemp 2 hours ago

In the TV show "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" the plot revolves around a gang of Geordie brickies who are contracted to dismantle an iconic bridge, The Tees Transport Bridge, from England and rebuild it for a wealthy buyer in Arizona

dhosek 6 hours ago

I remember the day I decided to finally go see the London Bridge and I drove over it three times trying to find it.

hydrogen7800 6 hours ago

I have to look this up each time I am reminded of it, to make sure it's not some absurd urban legend.

kylehotchkiss 3 hours ago

Wow CA HSR should just buy these and put them down between the lanes of the 5.

garyfirestorm 8 hours ago

Do they ship internationally

DubiousPusher 5 hours ago

If you're in the US and this excites you, you'll probably enjoy GSA auctions.

https://gsaauctions.gov/

drcongo 7 hours ago

I came quite close to buying a tube carriage a couple of years ago but it was slightly too long for where I wanted to put it.

classified 6 hours ago

Holy fuck, they do have a bridge to sell you. Although it's only available from 2027-04-01. April fools?

nairboon 6 hours ago

It's available from 2027-04-01 to 2027-05-01, so basically deconstruction will be done during April. The bridge seems to be legit from 1876. Local news says they'd rather sell it to someone for cheap to support circular economy than throw it into the trash. https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/sbb-verkauft-historische-brueck...

You might be able to make a good deal here, buy a bridge for 100 bucks.

fp64 5 hours ago

But please note that the bridge will be available without the guard rail / fence, parts of the concrete might be missing, and the rust proofing needs a refresh!

kylehotchkiss 3 hours ago

Do you think the Swiss have time for April fools?

folli 57 minutes ago

Reminds me of this classic: https://youtu.be/tVo_wkxH9dU