Off the Rails

“The brightline is a beautiful train. Ultra-quiet and decorated with streaks of highlighter yellow, it carries passengers between Miami and Orlando, sometimes moving as fast as 125 miles per hour. It restores glamour to the humble railroad: During your ride, if you wish, you can order a half bottle of Veuve Clicquot for $59; the on-board bathrooms are large and clean enough to take a decent mirror selfie in. Condé Nast Traveler has called it ‘super chic.'” But that’s not the whole story. “What the Brightline is best known for is not that it reflects the gleam of the future but the fact that it keeps hitting people.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): A ‘Death Train’ Is Haunting South Florida. “Floridians have started calling it the ‘Death Train’ and maintain a sense of gallows humor about it, saying that it must be “fed” regularly to keep hurricanes away. Train attendants told me that Brightline engineers and conductors sometimes darkly joke about earning a “golden ticket”—which is when the train hits someone at the right time so that the three paid days off a worker gets for emotional distress are rolled into a weekend that takes up most of the week.”