Could I have a private train?

[commasense]

@tanstaafl

I also hadn’t heard of the things commasense describes either, at least not in private hands (I think I’ve seen them with railroad logos on them). (I’ve also seen regular looking highway vehicles with what seem to be train wheels that can be lowered into position; I understand the railroads also use them for maintenance or whatever.)

I forget the official term for them, but pickup trucks with guide wheels that allow them to run on the rails have become the standard form of maintenance vehicle used by the railroads now. They are the main reason railcars aren’t used anymore, and thus are indirectly responsible for the growth of the hobby.

That’s interesting, but not exactly the same as owning your own train either.

Here’s another “not quite what you asked for” answer. Build your own railroad. About eight years ago I was privileged to visit the private railroad of Jack Sessums, a Hollywood special effects technician. As I wrote in my newsletter at the time:

@me

Over the last twenty years or so, one man, with occasional help from some like-minded friends, has gone beyond the wildest dreams of most boys and built a private railroad in his mountainous 30-acre “back yard.” This is no toy train set. Jack Sessums has laid about 2½ miles of quarter-scale track, constructed miniature stations and other buildings, and scratch built dozens of exquisitely accurate scale model railroad cars and engines, including the six-foot-long, live-steam 2-6-0 engine that is chuffing by the camera. The magnitude of the effort that must have been required is staggering, as is the attention to detail.

Not surprisingly, Sessums builds miniatures and does special effects for Hollywood films, with credits such as Speed, The Money Train, Broken Arrow, and 2000’s Men of Honor. He has graciously given Linton the run of his railroad for the weekend (for a token payment), teaching an actor how to operate the steam engine’s controls and, with the help of a few of his steam-buff buddies, wrangling the trains through the two long days of filming.

See the picture here. They were shooting a short IMAX film.

The extent of Sessums’ accomplishment is simply astonishing, and I daresay that if you wanted to pay someone to build you a similar layout, with engines, rolling stock, buildings, etc., it would cost you far more than buying a couple of full-scale private passenger cars and a used diesel-electric engine. Not counting the cost of the land!

Sadly, Sessums died in 2004, at the age of 64. I don’t know what has become of his railroad.