For The Price Of A BMW 5 Series, You Could Buy A Whole Damn Train
So you're looking for a way to get to work, and you're thinking about getting a nice midsize sedan to do the job. Maybe you've got a pretty good salary, so you're looking to drop $75,000 on a car like the BMW 550e to get yourself a practical, comfortable daily driver.
Well, if you do that, you're a coward. There's a way better way to spend $75,000 on getting from point A to point B, and it's buying an entire goddamn locomotive.
I spend an entirely normal and reasonable amount of time browsing GovDeals, looking for neat vehicles up for auction, and this is just about the neatest I've seen: A genuine General Electric Genesis P32AC-DM locomotive, straight from the rails of the Metro-North Railroad. This particular locomotive is number 226, and it would've run Metro-North routes out of Grand Central Terminal along the New Haven, Harlem, or Hudson routes. You might argue that you don't have train tracks on which to put a locomotive if you bought it, and I would argue that I can't hear you over the P32AC-DM's 3,200 horsepower.
You could conduct
Remember in "The Simpsons: Hit and Run," when you could do the little platforming section up to the monorail track and steal the locomotive to ferry you around Springfield? You could do that, for real. You could drive a locomotive around anywhere, tracks or roads or sidewalks, and who's going to stop you? You're in a locomotive — you're basically a force of nature. This locomotive has both diesel and third rail power capabilities, making it perfectly useful wherever you end up. Don't worry about the whole "infrastructure" thing.
This locomotive will almost certainly go to some transit museum or another, or be broken down for parts by another railway that uses these locomotives. You, though, should beat all those buyers to the punch. Sell your 5 Series and get yourself a locomotive, and you'll likely end up with the most interesting vehicle of the entire Jalopnik readership. Someone will have to really try to beat your record, especially for $75,000.