Do you ever travel by train?

[Flower]

This is a nice site on train car diners ... http://www.pinterest.com/clipperbay/train-car-diners-of-america/

I'd love to go to the Rock & Roll Diner one day ...   http://www.rockandrolldiner.com/

[Hepcat]

Those are great sites!

Now here's a good looking Wonder Woman boxcar that Tyco issued in 1977:

[jimm]

Always thought a train to Canada through the Rockies trip sounded fun. Locally there is a plan to have a train thru the northbay to Marin. Right off the train to the ferry to SF, no cars, cool

[Flower]

A very good friend of mine lives in Alameda in a lovely storybook home.  After he and his partner took a Vancouver train trip, they were both ready to move to Canada and leave all else behind. They didn't but really fell in love with the Rockies.

http://www.rockymountaineer.com/en_CA_ON/

[Flower]

This is a really good 'train' site.

www.railsnw.com


I want to be in this Parlour car.

[Hepcat]

Wow! Which train is that?

[Flower]

That car is from one of the African Rail Adventures that can be found on the website posted with the image.

[Hepcat]

I have a hazy memory of having journeyed to the beach with my mother and sister on the London & Port Stanley Railway one summer day in 1957(?). It would have been on an interurban car like this beautifully restored one that's part of the collection of the Hallton County Radial Railway Museum:

[Flower]

What a great looking passenger car! As a very young child, we would venture out to see relatives (we would see them and run the other way) on Long Island. I was very impressed with the double decker cars on the Long Island Railroad when it passed us on our journey.  Not every train had a double decker car and there was rarely more than one car per train but I longed to ride in one but never managed that feat as they discontinued the cars because of the lack of headroom caused by two levels or so I was told.

[Hepcat]

Some other interesting facts about Lake Baikal:

Comparing Lake Baikal to Lake Superior which is the world's largest lake by surface area is an interesting exercise. Lake Baikal is only the world's seventh largest fresh water lake by surface area with 12,248 square miles of surface area in comparison to Lake Superior's 31,700 square miles. Lake Baikal though is much deeper than Lake Superior with an average depth of a whopping 2442 feet compared to Superior's 483 foot average. Lake Baikal thus contains 5700 cubic miles of water volume in comparison with Lake Superior's 2900 cubic miles. Lake Baikal's extreme depth is due to the fact that it was not carved out by a glacier but is instead a 25 million year old rift valley or break in the earth's crust created by movement of the earth's tectonic crust (an earthquake).

The Agawa Canyon north of Sault Ste. Marie along the route of the Algoma Central Railway is another rift valley. If you've not taken the Agawa Canyon train, it's a shame.

[Flower]

I think that Hepcat wants to take this train ...

http://www.messynessychic.com/2014/01/24/last-train-to-sicily/

[Hepcat]

You bet!



Pity it only runs during tourist season in the summer though. That means that local residents don't use it very much as a means of everyday transportation. And I miss all the inter-urbans that once connected small towns across North America too. How I wish I could still take the train to Keswick, Goderich, Port Dover, Port Stanley, Owen Sound, Collingwood, Peterborough, Gravenhurst, Bracebridge, North Bay, etc, etc.

[Hepcat]

Port Stanley Terminal Rail is running a Murder Mystery train once again this Halloween season:

Murder Mystery Train



I see that it's all sold out again this year. Oh well. Maybe next year!

[Sean]

Growing up, the South Amboy station was a 5 minute drive from my house.  There you could take NJ Transit to Penn Station, NYC.  The ride takes 1 hour.

[ChristineBCW]

We made two lovely train adventures.  We were in NYC for 9/11 and fled after 9 days to Niagara, caught the Trans Canadian across to British Columbia, hopping off every other day for a 2-3 day honeymoon reclamation effort after the twin towers.  That was a pretty great train trip.

Then in 2010, we took AmTrak from Texas up thru West Virgiina into NYC, picked up a company car that was being transferred back to the Texas location and drove it back.  That was rather routine - highways.  But the train trek especially into little-town West VA was spectacular.  I'll always want to hop off on the small stops and avoid the big city ones. 

But that was tres expensive.  The version to our Calif locales wouldn't take so much time but the opportunities to stop at small towns is almost nil, compared to East Coast transits.