Future Luxury Excursions, Charters,
and Public TripsMost trips on New York Central 3 are custom-designed according to a client's request. The route of travel, the stops along the way, and the duration of each stop is designed exactly according to their needs - within the limitations imposed by the railroads and their train schedules. For instance, if a train runs only three times a week, as does the Sunset Limited between Los Angeles and New Orleans, it won't be possible to schedule a one-day stop in Houston, TX!
From time to time, VarChandra, Inc. runs special trips which are open to the general public. Usually, these trips are designed around a special event. For instance, a "day at the races" at Saratoga, New York, or travel with other private cars on special excursion trains. A highlight adventure took place in 2009 when we traveled 6500 miles behind the Southern Pacific 4449 steam locomotive from Portland, Oregon to and from a major train festival in Owosso, MI. In 2012, we reprised part of this trip on an Amtrak special train from Chicago to Durand, Owosso and Petoskey, MI and also in 2012, the car made its first appearance at a convention of private cars in Chatanooga, TN as part of the 29-car AAPRCO excursion train. We would like to do more such multi-car private car excursions where the layovers frequently involve towns off of the main Amtrak route schedule--and if you learn of such opportunities, kindly bring them to our attention.
Three specific near-term goals are (1) to travel to California in the fall of 2013 for the America Cup races (2) to repeat the Labor Day Amtrak special excursion from New York to Scranton, PA (via Albany and freight railroad routing) and (3) to "open up" Portland and Brunswick, ME to private car travel. As of this writing, we have ironed out all of the operational obstacles (such as getting between South and North Station in Boston) with Amtrak and are now concentrating on the political details of convincing the folks in Maine who control the state-subsidized trains that bringing private car passengers to Maine to spend their money should be a high priority.
In some cases, clients who have developed a customized itinerary sometimes request that we promote the trip in order for them to find one or two individuals (or couples) who want to join them on their trip in order to reduce the per-person costs. Typical examples are where only two couples are planning a trip and they know from the beginning that they need a third or fourth couple to defray the expenses. Less typically, some of the passengers who already have "bought into" the trip have a last-minute emergency and they need to fill the gap. (Trip insurance is recommended in order to reduce the potential financial impact of such emergencies.)
Whenever either the public trip or "fill-in" situation exists, the opportunities will be announced on the website maintained by the American Association of Private Railway Car Owners (AAPRCO) at the following link: