Dreamstar Lines - How to do Modern Passenger rail wrong | The 5008 Show |S1|E7| 

Great video! At this rate, the only way I see Dreamstar Lines offering some sort of trial service by next summer is to buy or lease two or three budd/pullman sleepers from the 40s/50s and place them on the back of an Amtrak train or a Union Pacific engine just pulling the two coaches. This would be an almost identical test run to X Train: a pretty much dead intercity rail proposal between Vegas and LA that showed retrofitted Pullman coaches in some renderings, and F59s with Gallery Cars in others.

I read an article about this a couple months ago and thought it was such a dumb idea, if not an outright scam. You basically covered all of my complaints here. I was also really bothered by the fact that their only "renderings" were clearly AI generated images. The train is shown running across the Golden Gate Bridge! Lol.

Hey, I want to start a rail passenger service from San Diego to Washington DC to be operational by fall 2024. Everyone give me money!

This is not happening at all. Summer 2025? I call bs. Union Pacific already hates passenger trains on their right of way, and this will even add more fuel to the fire than it already is. And like what you said, they don’t even have maintenance facilities at all either, so how can you run a train service without a damn maintenance facility to maintain the equipment? Running a train without proper maintenance is very dangerous and it’s just an accident waiting to happen. Sorry, but I ain’t buying to the Summer 2025 deadline, it’s just simply not going to happen.

If Union Pacific barely lets Metrolink operate on their trackage (Ventura County Line + Riverside Line) I highly doubt they’ll let some random company go willy-nilly on their trackage, especially when they don’t have any sort of backing or anything supporting their own entity. :/

The problem with Dreamstar is that its market will be destroyed when CAHSR eventually starts operating the whole LA-SF section.

Amtrak is apparently about to reequip the Capitol Ltd. with single level equipment and run through with the Silver Star. Where is the best place to employ the Superliner equipment freed up? One that might make a profit? Overnight SF-LA. Plus the LA-SF run is only 11 hours, and it won't be late going southbound.

Would make more sense to me as a Brit if they effectively had a sleeper version of the Brightline trainsets, maybe with more cars per set but given what your saying about all the wait times and approvals etc it sounds like it will not be happening any time soon

The idea of a sleeper train isn't necessarily a bad one. They're actually making a comeback in other mature rail markets, such as in Europe, because of the twin facts that younger people want more environmentally friendly transport and (more importantly) a well timetabled one-night service can do a solid job of replacing a short-haul flight + a hotel stay. The Caledonian Sleeper between Glasgow and London is a good example of such a train. High and Semi-High speed trains run that same route once or twice every hour through the day, and the sleeper runs it overnight (one in each direction) every day except Saturday. Of course, all the other issues you mentioned pose enough of a problem that whether the service is a sleeper or not doesn't really matter... all the complaining we do about the Caledonian's pricing (amongst train prices in general) seems to pale in front of what Dreamstar are apparently asking for their service.

As usual, I found this quite informative! I myself have been involved in adding information to the Wikipedia article about Dreamstar Lines, and I recall having difficulties finding much information about it. For example, I still don't even know what kind of rolling stock would be used. Some of the AI renderings show some TGV-esque trains, yet the website has a picture of F-units hauling 1950s passenger cars. If this operation will be set up, then they might have to look quickly for old sleeping cars, to say nothing of vehicles to transport the automobiles that they apparently plan on hauling. Also, I noticed exactly one of the issues you noted: the _Coast_ _Starlight_ already exists! Indeed, the only station on the Dreamstar route (San Francisco 4th and King Street station, San Jose Diridon, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles Union Station), only 4th and King Street isn't served by Amtrak, and even that's served by Caltrain. This line would be interesting if it happens, but if it doesn't, I'll remember your warning (and @Pennsyfan19's comment). Thanks for the video!

Nice video! Just discovered your channel, looking forward to more

They almost certainly would use used locos rebuilt, new means a long lead time and is way more expensive. You can get 8-12 bedrooms in a typical single level sleeping car mattering on exact size. Maybe they’ll try to rebuild comet cars given alstom has rebuilt heritage railcars for Rocky mountaineer into nice day coaches It’s absolutely a good idea I just don’t see why we should let them run it when the state could with less problems. The state also needs to finally implement more service overall on the coast

While I agree with the point that their deadline is unrealistic. they can run directly to San Francisco from San Jose using the Caltrain route. I can see this working if marketed right, and if it's not too expensive.

Most of Amtrak is nothing more than a sleeper service lol

Brightline is setting themselves up for a big fail as well with Brightline West. They are trying to compete on a market where ine end of the route is covered way better by the 5 airports in the LA region and the other end isn't that close to the actual destinations as well to be an advantage over flying.

Bro has Roblox and Minecraft.

What is the name of the catchy outro song?

Gavins in this...