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Comment by allthecybers | Hacker News Reader

We’ve had the tiny houses, shipping container homes, then the van life or schoolie (school bus as a home) trend, al of which were clever interpretations on what a home actually is.

I’m sure some enterprising YouTuber/lifestyle blogger could get us started on the private train car home era. I’m here for it.

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The housing market might turn the world into Snowpiercer:

It takes place aboard the Snowpiercer train as it travels a globe-encircling track, carrying the last remnants of humanity

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer

>The housing market might turn the world into Snowpiercer

I don't get it. Houses become so expensive that the last remnants of humanity has to live on a train? Isn't this a "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" situation?

I bet MrBeast could pull off a "I paid a guy $100,000 to spend a month in a private train car" or something.

Wouldn't even need to pay me to do it. The only thing stopping me is a lack of a private train car and presumably the significant expense of running it :(

There’s gotta be a Groupon for this. So long as anyone doesn’t have a major criminal record, I’m game.

Why would a criminal record be relevant at all?

Other than prior convictions for train robbery, I guess.

I, for one, would rather not be murdered on the Orient Express.

Bring some extra soups, what's the harm? Criminals have the best bedtime stories.

Seeing as they apparently made up fake terrain and mountains around Vinkovci in the movie I probably be worried about fake weather killing me.

To be fair, the Orient Express victim really did piss off a few people. And I don't know if many of them had any criminal records beforehand either.

So its a privately owned and operated rail car, that lots of people can group together with and pay the total cost of by individually paying a smaller part of it, like some sort of ... publicly accessible private transportation ... I think you might be on to something!

Jesus you’re right, I never knew I was a socialist.

Wait! All old first local trains started like this.

> publicly accessible private transportation

Uber for trains.

There, I said it.

Amtrak does this for free - check out the Writer's Residency Program

Ok, you're subscriber number one then. Anyone else? I'm completely serious. Private Varnish (ie: private railcars) have always been something I love. It would be a hoot to live in one with my fam for a year (if I can convince them).

I'm all on this for actually helping physically do this (even for loose definitions of physical, like run a website haha, but I'd imagine someone on HN restoring a train carriage could manage a Wix/SquareSpace/etc site by themselves)... I've wanted to build a steam engine since I was a kid, I thought it would be amazing to design a stupidly modern steam engine and break the world records with it, and this, while this is not a steam engine, it is honestly the closest I'll probably get to any of that dream given how impractical it is ...

Plenty of hobby clubs build wooden boats for fun as a group, why not railcars!

People are building steam locomotives, they're are several projects in Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_locomotives_of_the_21st_...

That sort of backs up my point though, the majority (all but one!) of the projects are rebuilding traditional steam engines for heritage/historical reasons. The one advanced/modern project was abandoned for lack of interest and done by a private company.

Also I’m in Western Australia… One of the two Australian projects on that page (based in Victoria) no longer has a functioning web page, which is not a good sign given the cost of a website compared to rent for a workshop big enough for a steam engine. The other project is making slow progress over the last decade building a replica of a late 19th century design which while cool and I hope they eventually finish it, doesn’t stoke the fires of my imagination enough to uproot my entire life to move closer so I can physically help make it happen.

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