Jaunted

Tags: Train Travel / California / California Travel / Napa Valley Travel / Thanksgiving Travel / Thanksgiving Alternatives / Wine Travel / Wine Country / → All Tags

Gourmet On A Train: Ditch Cooking For A Napa Wine Dinner

There is a certain romantic allure to train travel—just ask fictional sweethearts Jesse and Céline of Before Sunrise. But Stateside, unfortunately, the mode of transport isn't as common as it is in other parts of the world. While you continue to dream about hopping aboard a Darjeeling Railway car, we're happy to report that a smaller-scale train trek can be had in California, even if it is less grand than journeying across exotic international ground.

The Napa Valley Wine Train is a refined alternative to unofficial "drunk buses" tourists often book to stay safe while sipping wine flights throughout the day. Equally drinker-friendly, and much more respectable, the train is holding a special Thanksgiving dinner aboard its Gourmet and Vista Dome cars for $104 and $139, respectively. Sadly, lunch tickets have already sold out.

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Tags: Amtrak / Trains / Train Travel / Acela / On-Track WiFi / Technology / → All Tags

Amtrak Competes With In-Flight WiFi By Adding Internet To Acela In 2010

Alright so how broke Amtrak is and how badly they need more passengers and cash is old and negative news. So how about some good news for train travel? Just a few days ago, it was announced that Amtrak is planning for WiFi on its Acela trains by 2010. This is what their passengers badly need, and hopefully the Northeast's few Acela routes are just the beginning.

2010 may be just around the corner, but frequent Amtrak passengers have been vainly attempting to connect to a network onboard for months now. For instance, when we chugga-chugged our way for fifteen hours (each way) between NY and the Midwest in March. Oh yes, we found an open network or two that moved with our train, but couldn't successfully connect. What's that about?

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Tags: Train Travel / India Travel / First Class Travel / → All Tags

India Re-Imagines The Orient Express For $950 Per Night

If you know even the littlest bit about train travel, then you've probably heard of both the Orient Express and the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Both luxury trains associated with the gilded age, they are now shadows of their former selves, carrying fannypacked tourists on shorter or altered routes instead of the evening gown-wearing, long cigarette-smoking moneyed classes who indulged in a leisurely trip between Paris and Istanbul, or through Mongolia and into Moscow.

Luckily for those who have romanticized these luxury trains, there is a country that still embraces the idea: India. In the new few months, two new opulent trains will launch on routes that aim to cover some of the most famous sites in India, including the Taj Mahal and Varanasi of course. Per person, per night prices for the trips—the shortest trip being a week—begin at a staggering $500. But you'll be getting your money back in spades with these choo-choos...

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Tags: Public Transit / Atlantic City / Train Travel / Drinking / ACES / → All Tags

The Moving Cocktail Bar Is Now Open With ACES 'Pour Tour'

As city dwellers the world over know, public transit means never having to say "No thanks, I'm driving." (Disclaimer: be responsible, kids!) The new Atlantic City Express Service (ACES) train is taking this line of reasoning a step forward with Friday night drinking specials for four weeks starting Oct. 30.

The ACE Pour Tour runs between Penn Station and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal Friday nights on the #7165 train departing at 8:21PM. The 2-hour 40-minute ride will feature a new drink special every week through November 20: Enjoy Oktoberfest ales like Victory Festbier from Pennsylvania this Friday, the 30th, or get your $29 ticket now for "One Sweet Ride," featuring chocolate "martinis" and other dessert-y libations.

These drinks aren't free, but bartenders aboard the train will show you how to make them and hand you a recipe card along with your glass. Time your cocktail hour correctly and you will arrive in AC primed to play games!

Related Stories:
· Pour Tour '09 (click top right hand corner) [ACESTrain.com]
· Skip the Parking Fees: Catch the ACES Train to Your AC Hotel [HC]
· ACES Stands For A Better Way to Get to Atlantic City [Jaunted]

[Photo: ACES]

Tags: Crime / London Travel / Travel Crime / Trains / Train Travel / → All Tags

UK Forger Gets Busted For Fake Train Tickets

Back in middle school, one of our friends got a scanner for his computer—it was cool at the time, we promise. The logical thing was to immediately make fake hall passes, so we totally understand what Jonathan Moore was thinking when he did something similar. Instead of wandering the hallways, this IT expert made more than £12,000 in fake train tickets. His copies were pretty good since they allowed him to travel totally free for about two years.

He would have continued on his merry way except a ticket taker with a good eye finally ruined his free ride. One day in Brighton an inspector noticed a color variation in his ticket, and then another 11 fake tickets were discovered in the plastic wallet where he kept all his contraband. So instead of getting busted for just one ride, he pretty much got busted for every ride he ever took. It didn’t help that the local police found over 70 designs for forged tickets on his computer.

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Tags: Train Travel / Russia Travel / Travel News / High-Speed Trains / High Speed Rail / → All Tags

The Space Race Moves To The Rails As Russia Gets High-Speed Trains

When we talk about High-Speed Trains, it's not exactly news that the United States is extremely tardy to the party. Especially now that Russia has their act together and have debuted some Siemens-built trains designed to zip, rather than chug-chug, on the route between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The Sapsan—or "Peregrine Falcon"—train will ride the rails beginning in December, with an average speed of 250 km/h (155 mph), shaving an hour off of the total travel time between the two metropoli. No doubt this train will fast become a tourist's best friend, smoothing the passage between the capitals like the TGV did for the route between Paris and Nice, or the Thalys between Brussels and Paris. The big deal here, however, is that now we're talking about Russia.

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Tags: Amtrak / Trains / Train Travel / Vancouver Travel / Seattle Travel / Portland Travel / Olympics Travel / → All Tags

Amtrak Opening Up Northwest With Even More Seattle-Vancouver Service

Amtrak's Northwest Corridor, already busy in anticipation of the 2010 Olympics, just got a little bit busier. As of August 19th, the train company has added a second daily train to the Seattle-Vancouver portion of their Cascades route, a network of rails that bind Portland to Vancouver and back. The new train means that travelers now have direct daily round-trip service starting all the way at the bottom of the route and all the way till the end.

Amtrak Cascades connects Portland to Seattle with four daily round-trips, and then travelers are routed to their final destinations accordingly. They're celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, with the expanded Seattle-Vancouver route being a part of that. For the rest of the celebrations, which include promotions and events, there's even a dedicated 10th anniversary page.

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Tags: Bad Ideas / Amtrak / Guns / Train Travel / → All Tags

US Senate Votes To Allow Amtrak Passengers To Bring Guns Along

The United States Senate, in a ringing endorsement of the 2nd Amendment or something, has taken the bold stance that passengers riding on trains should be allowed to transport handguns as checked baggage. Apparently everything else has been taken care of, so they had time to get to this:

The Senate voted Wednesday to permit passengers on the Amtrak passenger railroad to transport handguns in their checked baggage... 'Americans should not have their Second Amendment rights restricted for any reason, particularly if they choose to travel on America's federally subsidized rail line,' said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who made the proposal. Current Amtrak policy, put in place after the bombings of passenger trains in Madrid five years ago, prohibits weapons, including firearms, from being carried on its trains.

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Tags: Japan Travel / Trains / Train Travel / Travel Health / Travel Safety / → All Tags

Groping Epidemic On Tokyo Trains Has Us Watching Our Butt

On the whole, Japan is a dream for travelers; it's full of polite people who go out of their way to help tourists. But that can all come to an abrupt stop when you get on a train in Tokyo (or, to be fair, probably any big city). That's when the gropers appear, and we don't mean the fish.

Authorities are warning travelers—especially females—to watch out for subway passengers who feel the need to grope them. They say they're particularly concerned at the moment because many of the recently-nabbed gropers say they have been inspired by websites on groping. One recent offender said in his defense: "He had viewed a website that detailed how and when to grope people and wanted to confirm if the hints worked..." And he'd even traveled 60 miles out of his way to ride a train line the website listed as being "easy" for groping.

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Tags: Train Travel / Alaska Travel / Beer Travel / Tours / → All Tags

Let The Alaskan Railroad Be Your Designated Driver

There's travel blog bait, there's travel blog bait, and then there's a train that takes you along one of the most scenic routes in these United States and serves you six half-pints of microbrews plus appetizers. Well played Alaska Railroad, well played indeed:

Take a scenic journey along Turnagain Arm with the world's best designated driver—the Alaska Railroad. The Microbrew Express travels 80 miles roundtrip from Anchorage to Portage and features an impressive assortment of the finest local microbrews and incredible scenery of Turnagain Arm.

We got tipped to this via The LA Times, which also notes that the BrewHouse beer menu includes Brewhouse Blonde and Oatmeal Stout. Tickets are $149 per person and cover the rail trip plus everything else. The event takes place Oct. 3 and purchases are obviously 21+.

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Tags: Fall-Foliage-Map / Fall Foliage Travel / Fall Travel / Outdoor Travel / Amtrak / Train Travel / Vermont Travel / → All Tags

Fall Foliage Travel: Amtrak To True Maple Syrup In Vermont

Live in on the east coast and have a serious craving for some real, true maple syrup on your pancakes before you head out for fall foliage-spotting? There's no other option for such a weekend trip then other than Vermont, with its 50 state parks and late September fall foliage peak.

Actually, the trip to Vermont should be just as packed with red, orange and yellow scenery if you hop on Amtrak's Vermonter, which originates in Washington DC, and goes up through Delaware, New York City, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont almost to the Canadian border.

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Tags: Train Travel / High Speed Rail / Stimulus Travel / Barrack Obama / → All Tags

Will The United States Ever Get The High-Speed Rail Network Of Its Dreams?

The Renaissance of train travel may (hopefully, awesomely) soon be upon us. Several states, including California, Illinois, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Louisiana and New York have applied for funds from the stimulus package to build high speed rail lines in their states.

New York's line, for instance, would run alongside an existing track between Buffalo and Albany and from Albany, it would run south to New York City and north to Montreal. At first, the trains would only travel at speeds of 110 miles per hour but that speed would increase as greater improvements are made to the line over time. And though the line does reach down to NYC, if built, it will most likely have the greatest economic impact on upstate New Yorkers who will have the option of working just about anywhere along the line with less than an hour's commute.

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