Thierry Gaugain’s Smart G-Train Envisions $350 Million Toy to Explore the World

Luxury trains are, of course, not a novel idea. Back in the day, when railway travel was all the rage, there were several offers for patrons with deeper pockets and the desire to get away for months on end. Today, traveling by train is either an unavoidable convenience or something one does out of nostalgia.

Esteemed designer Thierry Gaugain has an idea for a train that would completely shatter today’s perception of railway travel and, in the process, elevate it a new travel experience. Regular folks won’t ever get to have it, but there’s good news for the billionaires of the world: it is entirely doable. It can’t be done as early as this summer (so plan something else), but it could become a reality one day.

Here is G-Train, a project Gaugain unveiled in the fall of 2020. While it’s only a concept, Gaugain worked with several experts in various fields to ensure its feasibility. He tells The Robb Report that the only thing stopping it from being built is a future owner with $350 million to spare.

The G-Train is a train (duh!), but also a private “consummate way to travel.” Think of it as a megayacht on rails since it would feature a layout similar to what today’s vessels use. It would be smart and technologically advanced, fast, and incredibly luxurious, and would offer the complete package for a memorable trip around the world.

“We tend to think about rail transportation only in terms of speed, moving lots of people from point A to point B in record time,” Gaugain tells the publication. “But this 14-car train would belong to a single owner. It’s an alternative, very leisurely way to see the world, beyond the yacht and jet.”

Measuring 1,300 feet (396 meters), the G-Train could share a layout with the owner’s yacht, though. If you can match your shadow vessel to the mothership, you can very well match your private train to your superyacht! The master suite would be at the front, followed by the cars offering accommodation to 18 guests, the dining car, a spa, and public areas for entertainment, including a live music hall, art shows, and cinema theaters. Each car would include fold-down terraces, allowing guests to take in the views outside. The last car would be “the toy chest,” carrying the owner’s private to-go collection of cars, motorcycles, and off-road vehicles.

The G-Train would travel at speeds of 100 mph (161 kph) and make as many stops along the way as the owner or their guests desired. It could cross Europe and Asia or embark on a tour of North America, and it would be guaranteed (in theory, for the time being) to offer the most luxurious traveling experience possible.

The high-tech packed in it would help with that. Gaugain says the exterior of G-Train is smart glass, and it can turn transparent to black at the touch of a button, offering those rich guests the privacy they so badly seek everywhere. The same smart glass would double as screens on the inside, changing the background at the whim of the guests.

Gaugain is known for his seeming obsession with minimalist designs and the use of light to create new luxury experiences, and G-Train really stands out here: the smart glass would glow golden in the dark on the outside and offer a world of limitless imagery to those on the inside. For instance, as the train rolls through a winter landscape, it could create “a beautiful summer’s day with flowers and meadows” inside, “essentially a stage that the owner can configure in many ways.”

Unlike most designers, Gaugain approaches his projects differently, seeing if they could be done before going public with them. The G-Train sticks to that rule: he says he’s already been in talks with Swiss custom train builder Stadler, French glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain, UK engineering firm Eskerley O’Callaghan, and railway operations specialists, and the conclusion is that this dream train needs no longer be a fantasy. Would the real billionaire please stand up, $350-million check in hand?