This story appears in the April issue of ForbesLife magazine, dated April 9, as a feature entitled “All Down The Line.”
By Wayne Curtis
Private jets are all well and good, but as I step aboard the private railcar at Union Station in downtown Chicago for an overnight run to Denver, I think, Now, this conveys. A private railcar says you’re earthbound and rock-solid. Most of all, it says that you own your time. People will wait for you. The biggest luxury isn’t shrinking time to fit your life; it’s letting your life expand to fill the time it needs.
I am an invited stowaway on car 50, better known as The Patrón Tequila Express. It was built in 1927 as a private business car—one of maybe 2,000 specially kitted out for railroad presidents and industry titans—and is today owned by John Paul DeJoria, who cofounded Patrón Tequila and Paul Mitchell hair products (and who ranks 81st on The Forbes 400).
“Rail travel for me is the most relaxing, most scenic way to see the country,” says DeJoria, who bought car 50 in 1996. “I wanted to do my part to help preserve that golden age of travel.…I step aboard The Patrón Tequila Express railcar, and I go back in time to the days when a long journey was something fun and very special.”
Ker-chunk goes the coupling, and we’re headed west. Have we left on time? I have no idea. I sip a cocktail in the train’s observation room and position myself to watch Chicago’s skyscrapers recede. I start thinking about what I might have for dinner. Then I pull out a book.
DeJoria’s train has three staterooms, a master suite, a dining room, a vast kitchen, an observation room, and a crew member who looks after it all—an amiable guy named Chris Shaffer. “This is the nicest car in the world,” Shaffer says.
I haven’t discovered a global authority that ranks railcars according to niceness, but I won’t quibble with him. Plush doesn’t begin to describe the interior. The observation room is like a scaled-down Asian temple, complete with Buddhas, sumptuously carved woods from Kashmir, and exotic North Indian textiles on the sofas and reclining chairs. The dining room trends more Victorian, with heavy draperies, tufted couches, and tassels on the lampshades—think Timber Baron Lite. Modern conveniences abound: The staterooms have bathrooms with showers, and the observation room has a 46-inch flat-screen satellite TV that magically appears when you twist a certain brass finial.
About 130 to 150 private railcars roam the nation. What powers them? Amtrak. DeJoria’s train can go anywhere along Amtrak’s 21,000 miles. (Railcar owners reserve a spot in advance, then pay $2.10 per mile.) If you want to detour down a non-Amtrak route, you charter your own locomotive.
You can turn up a basic vintage car for between $150,000 and $300,000, then expect to put in $500,000 to $1.3 million to upgrade it to Amtrak standards. As with a yacht, though, it’s the operating expenses that really pinch. The Patrón Tequila Express costs about $10,000 a month, which includes maintenance, insurance, storage, and a bare-bones crew (Shaffer). That doesn’t include mileage or siding charges. “Most people would rather sit on a plane for two hours than spend two days on a train, but there’s nothing comparable to taking a relaxing rail journey with your family or good friends,” DeJoria says.
I sleep well, occasionally awakening to see distant farmhouse lights scudding across the Nebraska plains. Around dawn I take breakfast. (Eggs over medium, please, yolks runny but no runny whites.) The coffee is strong, and Denver’s suburbs gradually emerge into view.
The train pulls into Denver’s downtown station precisely on time. Which is my first—and only—disappointment of the entire journey.
