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Michael Margrave has a serious hobby that conjures up images of Atlas Shrugged and a seemingly lost form of long distance transportation in America. Michael owns a private rail car and travels frequently with an association of fellow rail car owners called AAPRCO. This group was featured on The Travel Channel’s “Tricked Up Trains” Program on Sunday, March 3rd. Michael’s railcar has been hooked to the Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific for Cross Continental Rail trips to places untraveled by the automobile.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the JetSetter Show, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. Enjoy and learn from a variety of experts on topics ranging from upscale travel at wholesale prices, to retiring overseas, to global real estate and business opportunities, to tax havens and expatriate opportunities. You’ll get great ideas on unique cultures, causes, and cruise vacations. Whether you’re wealthy or just want to live a wealthy lifestyle, the JetSetter Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the JetSetter Show! This is Jason Hartman, your host, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. I think you’ll enjoy the interview we have for you today, and we will be back with that, in less than 60 seconds, here on the JetSetter Show.

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JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Michael Margrave to the show! He is an attorney in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I had him on my Holistic Survival Show previously, talking about gun trusts, and I found out that he has a very interesting hobby, a very unique form of travel, and that is: ownership of your own railcar. The romance and nostalgia of railroads is pretty interesting to myself and a lot of other people, and today we’re gonna talk to him about owning your own railcar, and what it’s all about! Pretty interesting. Michael, welcome. How are you?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: I’m doing very well, Jason. Good to talk to you again.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, likewise. So, first of all, how did you become interested in owning your own railcar?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Well, I’ve always like trains as a kid growing up, and kind of a latent interest for many years. And oh, probably in the early 90s, I came across this group that I’m now a member of, that members restore and operate these old railroad cars, anywhere from 100 years old, up down to maybe 50 something. So, probably about 1998 I struck a deal with one of the railroads, they had some excess cars, and I acquired my car back then, and it took me four years to get it up to speed, and so about 2002, took my first trip in my car called Promontory Point.

JASON HARTMAN: That’s great. Great name. So, what did you do? Hook it on to an Amtrak train?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Well here’s—once you get it ready to go, there’s two ways to travel with these cars. One is, you’re absolutely correct. Probably the most common is to hook on to a regular Amtrak train, at certain points, and to be dropped off at certain points. Or the second way is if you have enough cars together, you can do what’s called a special train, which is in fact a trip we have coming up next week, and so, that—you need a certain number of cars to support that.

JASON HARTMAN: How many do you need, to get your own special train?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Well, you probably need at least eight or nine cars to support the cost of doing a special train.

JASON HARTMAN: Wow. Wow. It’s just amazing. So, I’ve just got so many questions here for you. First of all, you know, and I know this is on everyone’s mind, as they’re hearing you talk about this—so, these cars are, you said, 50 to 100 years old?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Yes they are.

JASON HARTMAN: And how much do they cost?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Well, you can—this is one of those questions that’s difficult to answer. Because you could start with a rundown, beat up car, and get it for $10,000, or you could get one at the far other end of the spectrum that’s completely finished, and has the best of everything on it, and that could be in the, you know, the mid to upper six figures.

JASON HARTMAN: Wow.

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: So, you don’t have to go that high; there are many ways to do it. But that’s the range of, to get into the hobby.

JASON HARTMAN: Right, right. So, it really sounds like—I mean, you know, a lot of people are probably thinking, as they’re listening, they’re comparing this to a recreational vehicle. And this is an RV. It’s a form of an RV. Quite a bit different than what most people would think. And as such, you know, you can buy a beat up old RV for $10,000, and you can easily spend 6, $700,000 on one—well, not easily. But you can spend up to about a million five on a gorgeous motor coach, 45-foot type thing. So then, the next question is, expenses and maintenance of a railcar—I would assume the maintenance probably isn’t too bad, but I don’t know; they’re older. It doesn’t have an engine. But, what does it cost to have your car hooked up to a train?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Well, just to backtrack on your one comments there, most cars have a air conditioning system, they have a diesel generator, they’re also able to use power from the train itself. And so, there are some pretty good internal components. And you know, sometimes when something goes bad, you can spend a lot of time trying to find a replacement part. Anyhow, to—if you go on Amtrak, there are a variety of charges they assess. And so, if you’re doing a solo trip, I’ll call it—your car, and you’re going from Los Angeles to Chicago, for example, they would have a mileage charge of, say, about $2.10 a mile. And then they have various parking, and switching charges, and so forth. So—

JASON HARTMAN: Say that again, that price? How much?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: About $2.10 a mile. And—

JASON HARTMAN: That’s fairly expensive then, huh?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Yeah. And so, the general idea is, people, when they do trips, they try to have friends, or people they know to join in, and participate in the trip, and help spread the cost around, so that it’s not a prohibitive type of thing.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, yeah. Well that’s a good point. So, what are the dimensions of a car? Are they all the same?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Well, you could say, as a general rule, you could use something like 83 feet long by almost 10 feet wide. And in the—you have various types of cars that we have in our organization, which is the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners.

JASON HARTMAN: There’s an association for everything.

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Yeah, there is, there is. You’re not kidding.

JASON HARTMAN: I gotta ask you, Michael—do you know how many members this association has?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Well, we have—and not all of them own cars. But we have about 500 members. We have a good number of associate members who like to partake in trips, and they are interested in it, but they may not have their own car. And but, within our group, we’ve got about 85 cars that are mechanically qualified to run on Amtrak trains. And so, getting back to your question, there’s various types of cars. Some are all sleepers, some are a combination of a sleeper car and has lounge facilities—

JASON HARTMAN: That seems like what you’d want. Just like an RV, you know, you want both.

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Yeah. And like my car, for example, it has an open platform at the rear end, it has a lounge area, it has three bedrooms, a dining room, and a kitchen, and then another little bedroom off the kitchen.

JASON HARTMAN: This is a true land yacht. I mean, it’s 83 feet long! So it’s about twice the length of a big RV! Wow!

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Yeah. It’s—yeah. And each car can handle varying amounts of people, depending on how the car is laid out. So, some have more room in the lounge and the dining room and less for bedrooms, and some have more bedrooms and less of the other. So, it’s—you see a wide variety of cars.

JASON HARTMAN: Sure you do, sure you do. Well, it’s got an open area at the back, so are you able to be the caboose on the train? I mean, if you have this open area, you wouldn’t want another car attached right behind you, I assume.

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: That is true. And so, for this trip we have coming up, this special, next week, is going to be a special from Omaha, Nebraska to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and then back down to Kansas City. Since I had a big hand in putting the trip together, my car is going to be on the back of the train.

JASON HARTMAN: You got the premier spot then, right?

MICHAEL MARGRAVE: Yes I do. I have the premier spot on this particular train.

JASON HARTMAN: Alright. And so, just