Sometime around 2018 or so, I was looking at renting a private car. Prices were all over the place, from $2k (but you had to provide your own chef (or something like that)) to $5k (chef included) for what I'd consider decent accommodations. I was wanting something big enough to fit 5-10 people to have a hackathon. There were several companies that offered this service and all of them were towed behind amtrak. But right in the middle of trying to figure all this out, amtrak announced some "changes" and that drove the cost up a bit and I think several of these companies simply closed shop or greatly reduced their service area so I dropped the idea. Splitting the charges between 5 or 10 people seemed like a fun idea though.
Amtrak wanted to end their private car services[1], but instead, just raised the price. There used to be "Private Varnish" magazine, but it's been discontinued.[2]
At one time, it was quite cheap to park a private railroad car at many downtown passenger railroad stations, because they were way underutilized and had much empty track. Not so much any more.
Sometime around 2018 or so, I was looking at renting a private car. Prices were all over the place, from $2k (but you had to provide your own chef (or something like that)) to $5k (chef included) for what I'd consider decent accommodations. I was wanting something big enough to fit 5-10 people to have a hackathon. There were several companies that offered this service and all of them were towed behind amtrak. But right in the middle of trying to figure all this out, amtrak announced some "changes" and that drove the cost up a bit and I think several of these companies simply closed shop or greatly reduced their service area so I dropped the idea. Splitting the charges between 5 or 10 people seemed like a fun idea though.