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PAXTrain for East Coasters?
Wingedillidan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
'ey There,
We all know that PAXTrain West was a huge success and brought a lot of people together BEFORE the actual con that brings people together. However, is there going to be a train like this planned for all those East coast attendees? Will there be any commandeering of any train cars this year? Or will we all just be forced to fly like those other guys, or drive and make our stomachs roll??? PAXTrain seems like a very fun experience and opportunity that should be unleashed on the unsuspecting EAST COASTERS; because face it, you want to keep the fun rollin'. Amtrak does service a lot of the coast stretch and trains are nothing but scarce to find.
So here's the question: PAXTrain for 2010 PAX East?!
-Wingedillidan
PS: Yes, this is my very first post on PAX, cause it's the very first PAX near my state!
We all know that PAXTrain West was a huge success and brought a lot of people together BEFORE the actual con that brings people together. However, is there going to be a train like this planned for all those East coast attendees? Will there be any commandeering of any train cars this year? Or will we all just be forced to fly like those other guys, or drive and make our stomachs roll??? PAXTrain seems like a very fun experience and opportunity that should be unleashed on the unsuspecting EAST COASTERS; because face it, you want to keep the fun rollin'. Amtrak does service a lot of the coast stretch and trains are nothing but scarce to find.
So here's the question: PAXTrain for 2010 PAX East?!
-Wingedillidan
PS: Yes, this is my very first post on PAX, cause it's the very first PAX near my state!
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Waivers will be passed out accordingly.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
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They mean taking the train up the coast and in to Boston, not the subway train
Unless you were joking...
That was the opposite of helpful.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
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Quite.
I haven't yet familiarized myself with the layout of the tracks and trains, but I imagine it's going to follow a pattern similar to the CCST - people will take trains, busses, or cars to connect to one or two "main" routes that hold the bulk of the PAXers. Those routes will simply be trains instead of cars.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
As I envision it, the primary goal of the PAX Train is to put as many PAXers on the same train as possible for as long as possible. That's what we're going for in constructing a PTE (PAX Trains East) program, or maybe a CCTT (Cross Country Train Trip). The less PAXers brought together for the less time, the less appealing the train becomes. Personally if it weren't for 50-100 other PAXers on the Coast Starlight for the WCTT, I'd fly. I'd pay double the train cost to fly. My philosophy when it comes to trains is that I fucking hate trains, but I love PAX, PAXers, and parties. I think this will hold especially true for PAX East due to the extremely long duration of the trip for many of us.
Also, I'm approaching this largely from the point of view of a west coast citizen. I'm trying to get those of us from the west and midwest to Boston. If you live south of Boston, say in Florida or Georgia, our routes probably aren't going to intersect very much. You're going straight up the east coast, and we're coming from an entirely different direction.
So. If our primary goal is to unite as many PAXers as possible on as few trains as possible for as long as possible, we need to look at long, continuous, east-west trains that can serve as the "main route" to PAX.
It appears that the most centrally located east-west route for the country is going to be the California Zephyr, which runs basically west to east from San Francisco, CA, to Chicago, IL. It basically cuts through the center of the country in terms of latitude.
There are other major east-west routes, but the Zephyr is the one that's right in the center of the country. I don't want to split the train into two main routes, because this theoretically halves the number of PAXers on each train, and thus halves the fun. Obviously more than two routes is out, via the same reasoning. This injects a certain amount of inconvenience if you live to the far north or south, but I don't think this is avoidable. In order to bring together as many PAXers on the same train as possible in the easiest way possible, we need a) a single train running across the country, and b) a train that's centrally located, so that the most people travel the least distance to get to said train.
This, of course, depends on the interested parties. If 80% of the people interested in taking the PAX Train live in states like Washington, Idaho, or Michigan, we might opt to go with the Empire Builder, which runs through all the nothern-most states before hitting Chicago. This would inconvenience the 20% to the south, but the net gain in terms of convenience would make it the attractive choice.
BUT: at the very early preliminary planning stages, with no information on potential passengers, operating on a purely theoretical basis with limited facts available, this is what I would say we're looking at:
We make the California Zephyr the PAX East line, and everyone hops on that when they can. There are many trains that connect up to the Zephyr from places both north and south, and of course, people can always fly or drive to hop aboard the Zephyr.
The California Zephyr, from San Francisco to Chicago, takes 51 hours. After Chicago the quickest route to Boston is the Lake Shore Limited, which is basically just a straight shot east. I assume we'll just do that.
Anybody who lives close to Chicago could opt to catch the Lake Shore Limited in Chicago with us, and train from Chicago to Boston. And clearly anyone in a spot between Chicago and Boston could hook up with us. That trip takes about 22 hours, and it would be the last leg of our trip.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
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Portalflip
Pokemon X: Atlus | 3539-8807-3813
Pretty sure the feds made the Reardon Metal they used for the tracks illegal.
I'm thinking those people will probably just want to jump onto the California Zephyr. If we're attempting to do a coordinated cross country trip, the Zephyr is probably the best option.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
The Zephyr runs nowhere close to the New Orleans or Texas Eagle. It would make more sense for them to fly to Chicago and just get on the Lake Shore, but even more sense than that to let them have their own thread to decide for themselves what they should do as a group without having other trains' discussions get in the way.
Take a look at the Amtrak route PDF.
I don't think there should be just one main PAX train, personally. Why limit things that way? Just doesn't make sense, considering the number of gamers in the Pacific Northwest who, like me, will not (or cannot) start their voyage by spending an extra few hundred dollars worth of travel down to California.
If I take the train, I'll be taking the Empire Builder, and I imagine there will be quite the party onboard there, happily bound for PAXEast.
I'm pretty sure that, much like the CCST, there will be a few main departure locations listed that all end up converging onto the main line. I could be wrong, though.
*edit* here is what the CCST map looked like for pax prime this year..
I think the only issue is that there's a bunch of routes that go into Chicago, from whence you can get to Boston on the Lake Shore Limited, and a bunch of routes that go into New York, from whence I think none of the trains to Boston are party-friendly.
*shake fist*
The Sixth Annual Triwizard Drinking Tournament Part 1 |
Pokecrawl Episode 4: The Power Of One!
Portalflip
Pokemon X: Atlus | 3539-8807-3813
If you'll notice, the central idea behind the CCST is that everyone connects up to a main east-west route, which you can clearly see to the north. This is absolutely not the most efficient way to get to Seattle for a lot of starting locations; Texas, for example, would be far better just heading northwest. But because the CCST is awesome, they go out of their way to hook up with the rest of the group. Efficiency and speed is obviously not the goal of the CCST - they could all fly and be there in a fraction of the time it takes to drive, but they don't.
This is the kind of thing we need to do for the trains. If efficiency is not a goal of the CCST, it certainly isn't a goal of the train trip, which will take 70+ hours from California to Boston. In order to make the train awesome enough to legitimize that kind of time, we need to get the most people on a single train as possible. In order to do that, we need to pick a major west-east route, whichever one, and funnel everyone else to it. That's the whole point. Will it end up taking longer and being more expensive for some people? Yes. I think that's an unavoidable side-effect. And if the added time/cost is prohibitive, that's certainly a bummer. If you don't want to do it, more power to you. There are clearly loads of people from all over the country who fly instead of doing the CCST.
Thus, in my opinion what we need to do in the coming months is find out a) who is interested in taking the train, b) where they live, and c) figure out which major west-east line would be the most convenient for the group as a whole. If everybody lives to the north, we might go with the Empire Builder. If everyone lives to the south, we might do the Southwest Chief. If it's pretty evenly split, we might do the California Zephyr.
In all likelihood, I imagine it might be easier to pick Chicago as the point of convergence for the western half of the United States. If we want to do a train, we can do the Lake Shore from Chicago to Boston and have a party, albeit it shorter than the WCTT, there. Get to Chicago however you like - car, plane, train, whatever. Attempting to coordinate the trains going from west coast to east coast might prove to be too massive an undertaking. Although, I'm sure the CCST is just as massive, if not more so. And they do it every year.
EDIT: I just realized that the title of this thread is "PAXTrain for East Coasters," and I'm talking primarily about west coast and midwest people. If I hijacked the thread I apologize. I will shut up.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
It's okay, I already got my answer in about 20 walls of text... Carry on. Also, I am a New Yorker interested in joining in, but since I'll be joining in late-in-the-game; I mind as well wait for a CCST from EAST to WEST in the hopefully near future *eyeballs Moe and Arco,* I'm sure of the fact that we can get something going for when the time comes to do a reverse CCST to West coast.
Yeah. Snow is deadly, and there are two giant mountain ranges to get across.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
It takes a day and a half to get to Seattle!
naknaknaknaknak
How long does it take to drive to Seattle from the eastern seaboard? And people do it anyway, and they can't even play Rock Band on the road.
A very good point, although I'm fully confident that someone in the CCST could get a Rock Band setup going in a moving car.
LA to Boston takes 70+ hours.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
Until the cops notice.
Psh. Cars come with DVD players pre-installed these days. If it was all in the back seat I think you'd be totally legal. And mega awesome.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
Yeah, but how do you swap out band members? I'm sure the cops would notice that.
70+ Hours?! That's the time it takes to get to China and BACK... Man we need some Bullet Trains.
For truth.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!