FLORIDA'S HIGHER SPEED TRAIN - My Amazing Brightline Experience!

hello welcome to mini vation studios Michael here and today I'm going to be talking something that's a little bit different than my usual content here on YouTube and that is I'm going to be talking about bright line what is bright line you may ask it is a higher speed rail intercity train that currently runs between West Palm Beach Fort Lauderdale in Miami and it is also the first private rail company in the United States for a very long time which is super awesome I've always had a lifelong love for trains and you know I usually play with like my model train says for a very long amount of time so yeah I'm obviously a very big train enthusiast then you know basically in 2018 I heard about this new bright line train opening I knew that had to write this thing so yeah I was very fortunate enough to basically manage to get right on the bright line train during spring break of this year now I know some of you guys may be asking about like why do I have such a fascination with private rail what a thing is is that America was built on private rail and these companies were responsible for some of the most luxurious and finest trains that ever existed what I got pictured right here is some of the many famous trains that used to run across the United States and basically through a lot of bad circumstances these things died out there's actually a great video by the American Rail Club that actually details why that is I put the link to that video in the description below but anyways yeah through these unfortunate circumstances private rail died with the Rio Grande Zephyr being the last private passenger train service to run in America and that thing actually stopped his service in 1983 the same year that Star Wars Return of the Jedi came out yeah it's been that long ago and it's pretty sad until now with bright line pinging private passenger rail service back into America so yeah when I was writing this thing the very first question that I thought is that does it live - the amazing passenger trains that used to run across America well you guys are about to find out but before we go on I would like to give great shout out and thanks to these amazing youtubers right here because without them this video would have not been possible I came out a little bit short on the amount of video content that I needed for this video and the help of these guys I was able to finish this bright-line review so once again I think these youtubers for providing me with some footage to make this video happen so this is what the parking garage and station for bright light in West Palm Beach looks like and it is super gorgeous to look at and I think this is actually something that they just added recently which is like their solar panel thing and yeah of course I had to take a picture of myself in front of that so yeah let's hop inside and see what the inside of the bright light station is like now the very first thing that you're greeted upon when you come into the station is that they have this really nice smell that permeates throughout their station it smells really good inside of there and so this is what their ticketing booth looks like and it is very easy to use they got the times of the trains displayed on there and it's very easy to navigate through the menu you know like of to basically buy your ticket and this is what the ticket of bright line looks like as you can see it's a very nice-looking ticket but it's also very useful as well because they have this barcode on the back of the ticket that you basically use over the turn tiles to let you inside the main part of the bright light station I'll show you guys that in a little bit but yeah after you bought your bright line tickets you go up these escalators and make your way to where the turn tiles are at so this is what the turn tiles look like and don't worry about the security of this place because they are very easy to go through much easier than any airport in this country but yeah so the cool thing about the turn tiles is that if you happen to have a group of people come along with you you only need to scan one ticket at the turn tiles and the turn tiles will let the whole entire group through it's very nice and very convenient now the biggest question that everybody had when bright line first open is that how good is the ridership of the train going to be well actually off last year Alan from Millennium Force actually made this video and things weren't looking very good for bright line when he made this thing January 22nd and we have a bright line train coming and we're in the train station with people way that come on Teresa and the only thing is there's nobody here me and Teresa are the only ones here which kind of worries me because I don't know if this railroads going to be doing good like they think you're gonna do there is nobody here this train we're getting on departs at about 15 to 20 minutes and there is nobody ready to get on this train it is empty I don't know and a bright line raises their train price tickets like they're supposed to this is just an introductory offer think I'll be nobody riding this train I feel sorry for them well you don't have to feel sorry for them anymore Alan because when I wrote this thing it was packed there was a lot of people in the lounge of the station you can even see some of the kids that were playing in the kids area that's right here so yeah things have definitely improved in terms of ridership for like bright lane and all that so this is what the view of the station's looks like outside of the window I just thought it'd be kind of cool to record that but yeah they actually do not allow people to stay on the platform's of their station they let people stay in these lounges this is the lounge for the smart class on the lowest priced ticket which is what I wrote for this trip and these are actually the escalators that you use to get down to a platform to board the train and this TV screen will tell you like when is the proper time to board the bright line train so yeah when you make your way down these escalators the boarding process for these trains are very quick it's amazing how fast it is and I'm going to show you this video clip as proof of that yeah did you see that yeah that was all the time I had to basically record our boarding process for the Train but what I wanted to show and somehow I managed to get this picture that these trains are very cool because they have platforms that extend out from the trains so that it basically makes it easier for everyone and especially the people in wheelchairs to get on the train and that makes sense because bright light is fully a DA compliant so this is what the seats of smart class looks like and these are very comfortable they're made with hand-stitched leather made in the USA and on top of that these seats are very forward-thinking because when you recline in them it doesn't like poke back into the row of the person right behind you which is very forward-thinking the nice thing is that this train also has these table seats that you can write in as well and these tables are very spacious as I'll show you and one more thing that I'm going to have to mention before I forget is that seating on bright line is reserved so yeah I made sure that I Reserve's table seats from my forward and return trips on bright line so this is what the table that we wrote on you know like looks like and it is very like spacious and comfortable I actually even saw some people playing Scrabble on another table on the same coach of this train which is awesome these tables also have these really nice outlets where you can basically plug in two power plugs and also two USB ports you actually have the same outlet that occurs between each of the two chairs which is cool with the table you also have this extendable shelf that you can pull out and it has like this really nice cup holder that's a you know like a where I place my a nice drink on when you're in smart class water is actually complimentary all you need to do in order to get it is just ask the the trolley attendants whenever they pass by so this is what the menu of bright line looks like and the thing is with smart class none of this stuff is complement but if you actually select the higher classes like smart plus and select you will actually get complimentary food and drinks which is definitely a plus for those things oh this was going to be like a regular footage of me just like reading high on stuff but my dad decided to do something very different with this they happen one of all time well on a new train the bright light rain while talking about and here's his mom [Music] yeah here's the dad yeah the cool I hope you guys enjoyed that but anyways yes the this is what the window are the view outside brightly looks like and yes s at the moment this train only does 79 miles per hour max between West Palm Beach to Miami but they're currently working on extending this railroad from West Palm Beach to Orlando and that's actually will do a 110 miles per hour on the Florida East Coast railroad and there's going to be an off grade section that is gonna go from Cocoa to Orlando that's around 40 miles that's gonna do 125 miles per hour which is fantastic but yeah the rail is that bright line right on are very smooth and I'll explain this with my different self okay so the thing you have to understand about writing an intercity train is that usually those have a lot better suspension systems and your typical like subway train or streetcar so as a result when you ride one of those it feels like you're riding on top of a cloud the thing is though is that like what dictates what makes the intercity trains rough or not is the horizontal motion that the Train makes because you know like if the rails are in really bad shape yeah yeah that's the way it's gonna be rough it's not gonna be rough like this but it's gonna be like swaying and stuff like that and I had a very similar kind of experience like that on the Amtrak train I wrote Amtrak from Orlando to Savannah and somehow the track on the Jacksonville to the Savannah Division of that route was pretty rough where basically yeah the Train was like basically doing this swing motion throughout the entire thing now you do get used to it when you're running on the train especially when you write it for like roughly around like five hours or something like that but the thing is is that when you get off the train and you're walking on like normal ground since you've been accustomed to beat you know that swaying motion on the tree when you get off the ground your body it feels like it's doing this kind of motion which is not very pleasant at all it doesn't feel very good bright line on the other hand was absolutely smooth it was smooth as silk we're basically yeah it didn't do any of that horizontal motion whatsoever as or so whenever I you know like basically got off the train up my legs and my body didn't do any of that salainte motion which is which is pretty good so around 40 minutes later our train arrived on time at the Fort Lauderdale station which is how I got right here and the reason why I put out my camera record is that when when I was departing from the West Palm Beach and the Miami stations what you actually get is that there are actually people on the station the staff members that actually wave to you as the trains leaving it's a really nice touch but unfortunately I the Fort Lauderdale station didn't do that and I think that's because at this station only they'll allow people to wait at the platform so that's that but another thing is that you may have noticed is that this train actually accelerates very well actually and unfortunately I didn't record it but this train also has an amazing braking power it was far superior braking and acceleration power than the Amtrak train that I wrote and it's not surprising especially when you consider that Breitling is powered by two CMAs charger which has superior attractive power than the the p42 genesis locomotives that Amtrak is currently using here's another view of the view from the Breitling train and yes 79 miles per hour is behind in terms of world standard but it still actually looks relatively fast I think it may actually appear slower in the video but it actually appears very fast in real life and the thing is with the bright line tray is that you enjoy your trip so much that that one hour 15 minutes trip between West Palm Beach in Miami feels like basically like 30 minutes that's how good the ride is so yes after 35 minutes so from departing for Fort Lauderdale we arrived in Miami and the thing is is that one thing I have to commemorate on is that these staff members and the security guards at bright line are very very nice they are super nice in order to get this picture one of the security guards you know like actually escorted us over there to basically you know like watch us to prevent like from falling off the platforms in order to get the our picture taken and the cool thing is that I had to say right now is that actually one of the security guards on our way back from Miami to West Palm Beach he actually was like a camera into like me and he asked about the camera I was using to record this video we had a nice talk about it and then on top of that he even recommended me that I get it inspire one drone or something like that I can't ever imagine a security guard on any other form of transportation ever talking you know like in such a nice way like that gentleman did to me yeah that was definitely far superior than any security guard I have ever seen especially the ones that you see in this video cramming people into airplanes like a can of sardines and then forcing them off of a plane when you overbooked your own flight the airlines really need to learn a thing or two from bright line on a lighter note after we got pictures taken me and my family made our way to where the escalator saw because the cool thing is that the bright line train on the Miami Central Station stops at the third floor so you obviously need to take escalators down there and while I was taking the escalators I found if somebody doesn't have a very good sense of smell smell again you smile yes ma'am haha I was actually very surprised that my dad couldn't smell the perfume that bright light tends to spray around their station because it's a very heavy scent it smells like citrus and all it smells very nice so this is what the second level of the Miami Central Station looks like and it's so nice that bright light makes you go down all these escalators on to their first floor of their station by the way that's this is what the first floor of the Miami Central Station looks like it's so nice that the bright light does that because it really makes you feel like that you're departing into Miami like a bunch of angels or something like that it's very cool that they did that but yeah this is actually a very impressive station it's very large it's very spacious it's certainly no Penn Central of the golden years of Pennsylvania Railroad but it's still very nice now one little disclaimer that I have to make before going on in this video is that you see those little like droplet things that is like on the camera lense at the top left corner of the screen well that's actually caused by a UV filter that I decided to put over the lens of my camera the reason is because I actually lost my LEM lens cap for the camera so I decided to put the UV filter on it to protect it but unfortunately that UV filter is not perfect so that's that's basically what's causing I just let you guys know so anyways this is what the outside of the bright light station looks like it's very nice and we thought that the best way that we were going to get around in downtown Miami is through the automated people mover that they have there the Metro remover so we made our way over to the Metro mover station I decided to shoot this footage right here as you can see yeah Miami centro is huge and the reason for that is that not only is Miami Central going to be a train station is going to be a mall and an apartment complex and parks and everything it's gonna be super massive in the future it's amazing here's some footage of me running the Metro mover and the cool thing is that Briley actually put some of their advertisements on the Metro mover Miami Assaf right now in fact here's a picture that I barely just managed to snag of this thing the thing is is that it was actually very hard for me to take a picture of the bright light decorated Metro mover because every time that this Metro mover showed up I had to board the Metro mover that I needed to take to go wherever I needed to go and here's the example footage of that yeah that was definitely camera work I'm not very proud of I hope you I didn't make you guys sick but yes we took the Metro move for all the way northward and made our way to Winwood now if you don't know anything about Winwood it's basically I think it's very well known for its like graffiti art and all that kind of stuff and you can see it throughout the entire neighborhood and here's a picture of me taken in front of one of the what I personally think one of the nicer graffiti is in Wynwood but yeah I actually was not in Wynwood for the art but because of some of my aunt customers told me that there was some pretty good foods there one of the restaurants that they recommended me was this ice cream place called Morelia sand yeah it was very good but we also ate lunch there at this very nice restaurant called Kush I think this restaurant has to be one of the best restaurants I have ever ate at it is really good so like for appetizers you can actually ordered fried alligator and the cool thing about their menu is that you can actually order food for your dog yes for five dollars you can actually feed your dog something at this restaurant but anyways for the main course I had just like this big Johnny Utah burger fantastic my dad had like this Conchas sandwich as well he's basically fried conch and that was pretty good too and my mom had a Reuben sandwich and it was the best tasting Reuben sandwich I ever ate there so if you ever make your way to win would definitely eat a Kush it's very good and it's definitely worth the money especially when compared to Bayside market but anyway so after we were done with coach we made our way south bound of the remover and we actually came to the riverfront of Miami and basically I shot this very nice footage here very relaxing it was very nice way to you know spend our time in Miami and then basically after we spent our time on the Riverwalk we then made our way over to the Bayside market and yeah that was a pretty interesting as I said before definitely don't order any food here because yeah their stuff is overpriced and it's not very good in fact they oh they took so long to serve our food it almost made us late for our train but yeah after waiting for 40 freakin minutes for our food at Bayside market it was time to get back on the Metro mover and head back to the Miami Central Station for our return trip and this is actually what the lounge for the Miami Central Station looks like and they actually got a very cool thing going on because apparently they're holding like some kind of like Wizard of Oz kind of event that actually a so right now when I make this video you can still go to it because this thing will end around a jus 16 but yeah they got like Dorothy's ruby slippers on display they got like this like barn that you I can interact with and all that kind of stuff and the thing that I liked too was that there was this machine at the corner right here where if you press a button it will actually simulate or tornado or something like that which I thought that was pretty cool but within a few short minutes it was time to head back onto our train now as you can see here yes actually a lot of people were heading back from Miami to West Palm Beach which is very interesting because the time that this train was going to leave was actually around like 8:10 p.m. which is supposedly one of the least crowded times for bright line but as you can see here the train was stoop act so yeah so the right about Breitling is definitely improving so with it is very speedy one hour and 15 minutes me my family were back at the West Palm Beach station and they was sadly time to go home I most definitely enjoyed my time with Brian it has a lot of potential it's such an amazing train and the amazing thing is that Sir Richard Branson actually sees that as well that he was willing to basically partner with Florida East Coast industries the company that owns bright line and actually was working to basically allow bright line to be renamed into something else unfortunately I really do not like the new name that bright line is going to take on it's going to be called Virgin Trains USA yes that's right Virgin Trains USA it's been six months since the announcement of this renaming yes you can't get over that name why does it bright line just renamed itself simply into virgin bright line I have many different reasons why this would be actually I personally think would be a wiser choice for Breitling to rename itself into but to avoid this video from becoming any longer I'm going to be saving this for the next video that I'm going to be uploading on this channel so yeah stick around for a week and you guys are going to see this video and why I think personally that bright line should just simply rename itself into virgin bright line but anyways yes I absolutely enjoyed my time on bright line and I gotta say this was definitely the best experience that I've ever had on any fire transportation in America I mean like with the beautiful stations the nice trains the nice staffs the timely service what's there not to love about bright line and also I think Rylan is truly the story of the little engine that could because yes it's no 220 mile power bullet train but in my honest opinion it doesn't need speed just to win my heart and going back to what I said the beginning of this video where you know like does Breitling live up to the heritage of the amazing trains that used to run across America it most certainly does is going to pick up where these trains left off and bring passenger rail service back into America for the 21st century so yes I hope you guys enjoyed this review about bright line I usually don't normally do like transportation videos but since I love bright line so much I absolutely have to do it so anyway so yes that's basically all I have to say for this video I hope you guys love my coverage of Florida's higher speed rail and I'm going to see you guys next time take care

Channel: Minnovation Studios

Views: 26,195

Rating: 4.8482757 out of 5

Keywords: Florida's Higher Speed Rail, Florida's High Speed Train, Brightline, Virgin Trains USA, America's High Speed Rail, All Abord Florida, Travel Video, Florida East Coast Railway, American Passenger Rail, America's Best Train, 20th Century Limited, Broadway Limited, Hiawatha, Model Trains, American Rail Club, Richard Branson, Brightline Ride Review, Brightline Train, America's Most Advanced Train, Bullet Train in Florida, Orange Blossom Special, United Airline Drags Passenger

Id: zVfS0SJyi7w

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2019