Meet Someone Who REALLY Enjoys Train Travel!
A little over two weeks ago, on April 7th, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief came to a stop at La Plata, Missouri, on its way from Los Angeles to Chicago. From the door of a sleeping car, a beaming Chris Guenzler stepped out onto the platform and into his own modest place in the history of train travel.
Photo credit: TrainWeb.com
I don’t know if there was a brass band on hand, but there darn well should have been! There was a crowd to greet him, however, because Chris had, at that very moment, completed exactly one million miles over all the routes in the Amtrak system.
According to Steve Grande of TrainWeb.com, it is theoretically possible that another passenger may have traveled that many miles on Amtrak, but so far no one has stepped forward to make that claim and none are expected.
It’s also possible, perhaps even likely, that a few veteran Amtrak employees have reached that milestone, but certainly none of them would have done so by traveling every one of Amtrak’s routes.
Chris’s story is interesting, improbable and heart-warming. You can read more about this unusual man by clicking here.
Mr. Love notes that a million miles really isn’t that much in a real world that has many trains. It isn’t that much in the USA either; I know numerous people who have travelled that far and more on Amtrak. In my case I reached a million miles a number of years ago and am close to two million. If Mr. Guenzler wants to publicize his travels that is fine–we need all the help we can get to promote rail service–but he should not claim either to be the first to travel a million miles or to have documentation.
–Duane W. Roller
Very interesting! It got me thinking (always a good thing!) about high mileage travellers.
Unfortunately, the strongest conclusion that I came up with is that this is a reflection on how bad the North American railway system is. A little mathematics, and internet research, leads to the conclusion that there are thousands of “million milers” in Europe and Japan.
The Times of London, writing about business commuters on the French TGV system has this to say:
“Vendôme, 260 miles to the southwest of the capital, has become a dormitory town. About 400,000 people use the TGV for daily work.”
Source:
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/holiday_type/rail_travel/article645220.ece
Doing a little math, someone commuting from Vendôme five days a week would travel:
daily – 520 miles
weekly – 2,600 miles
yearly – 119,600 miles
Note that I assumed this person, being French, has six weeks vacation every year, and got the yearly figure by multiplying the weekly by 46.
After less than nine years this Frenchman will have travelled over one million miles on the railway.
Similar situations have been in Japan since the first Shinkansen started in the 1960’s. There is probably a large number of people in Japan who have travelled over four million miles on the railway.
Hello,
Chris Guenzler herte and thanks for the nice post on your web site.
More of my stories can be read at:
http://www.trainweb.org/chris
Thanks again,
Chris Day 4846