Who needs self-driving cars? Why not ride around in your own private train-car?
She was parked at South Station for much of last week.
At first, I thought it was just an older train car the MBTA was working on.
I mean, some of those commuter rail coaches are pretty darn old. And the city does keep antique subway cars on display here and there.
Dagny next to a regular commuter rail coach.
But after a few days of passing this marvelous, art-deco carriage, I noticed the name emblazoned on the side.
Dagny Taggart!
There was no way a car named after a capitalist icon belonged to a city in Massachusetts.
Dagny Taggart was the heroine of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a strong-willed railroad magnate. Her name seems especially appropriate for a privately owned train car, both for it's association with the values of lassaiz-faire capitalism and the car's vintage.
(You can go ahead and debate the merits of Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy in the comments. My reputation score can only benefit from some lively and fractious conversation...)
I can't imagine what it costs to purchase, restore, and then maintain a carriage like this. And then you've got to pay the railroad companies something to tow you around - it's not like this thing has an engine!
Here's a video of the Dagny Taggart being towed, along with another private car, behind an Amtrack train. (Jump to 2:30 for the money shot.)
There are several other videos of the Dagny Taggart getting towed around, online.
Sitting on the tracks at South Station can't be cheap.
Like I said, I think this car was here for about a week - sitting on some pretty prominent real-estate.
Remarkably, people were living right on board!
With tens of thousands of commuters walking by every hour, this has to be the highest priced, least private way to stay in the city I can imagine.
No wonder they had Venetian blinds installed on several of the windows.
The train-car comes equipped with a kitchen - though not, apparently, a dish-washer.
There's also a luxurious lounge at the end. It's hard to make out the leather furniture through the reflections, but I felt like I was being intrusive enough taking pictures into someone's living room without pressing my lens directly against the glass. (But then again, if you park your house at a train station, aren't you kind of asking for attention? Also - remarkably - nobody else seemed to notice this unique car was sitting here. Or maybe I was just the only one brazen enough to ogle.)
The lounge was equipped with a large flat-screen TV.
Apparently there are four bedrooms and a rest-room on the car as well. I learned most of this from another youtube video, featuring an interview with the car's owner. (Jump to 7:00 to skip a North Dakota weather report.)
Walking past the car on Wednesday, I saw the man featured in the above video talking with someone on the platform. I should have overcome my shyness and interrupted his conversation with a few questions, but I was running late for my own train, and the platforms were mobbed with people catching a special run to Foxboro for the Patriots Football game. Maybe he'll find this story through Google and we can have a chat in the comments.
The Dagny Taggart on a quieter morning.
There is something exciting and romantic about this 1940s train car.
Although owning and maintaining it certainly wouldn't be my cup of tea. If I was going to maintain a self-contained vessel like this, it would have to be a sailboat. A boat can go anywhere on 70% of the planet, powered by the wind, and with a remarkable degree of privacy. A private train car is just about the opposite of all that, constrained to tracks and corporate schedules, and limited to very public yards and stations for parking.
But I certainly admire someone who is so into their passion that they'll live a piece of history like this.
Would you like to travel in a private train car? Would you own one?
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