Riding Freight Trains

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AlanB said:
Not only is it illegal, since you are tresspassing on private property, it's down right dangerous. :eek:
Many a hobo has paid with his life for a trip, not to mention kids who think that it's cool or fun to try and hop a frieght.

While I'll allow people who may have done something like this in the past to answer your question about "have they ever hopped a freight", be warned that I will delete any posts that give advice on how to hop a freight train or condone the practice.
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If you are plannin on riding dont... not unless you have a good idea as to what yer doin... i ve been doin along time... be careful and dont ask punk rockers for advice
 
My grandfather used to share stories with me about how he would hop trains from Red Wing, MN to Chicago. He was also a bit of a hell-raiser in his youth and it was back in a time where it was much more tolerated.

A very interesting read on hoboes and riding the rails is Rolling Nowhere by Ted Conover. He took a year off of college and rode the rails all over the Western US in the early 1980's learning about the hobo way of life. He did mention in an updated preface he would never be able to do it these days.

Dan
 
I hopped freight trains when I was younger...but they were about 8 inches tall...on 7.5 inch gauge track...and I had a ticket :p

The Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, GA had the North Georgia Live Steamers running around a figure-8 track until 1999 when the SRM moved up the road a ways. The North Georgia Live Steamers have now settled in a location at/near the Georgia International Horse Park in my hometown of Conyers and are proceeding with construction of their new line.

(I was taught from an early age that trains were to be admired and not gone near unless they had passenger cars, were stopped, and you had a ticket or museum admission, but I was feeling a tad left out :p )

BTW-Bill, I had always heard that the Georgia Railroad was required to operate passenger service as long as it existed because of its charter with the state. Is my information wrong?
 
MattW said:
I hopped freight trains when I was younger...but they were about 8 inches tall...on 7.5 inch gauge track...and I had a ticket :p The Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, GA had the North Georgia Live Steamers running around a figure-8 track until 1999 when the SRM moved up the road a ways. The North Georgia Live Steamers have now settled in a location at/near the Georgia International Horse Park in my hometown of Conyers and are proceeding with construction of their new line.

(I was taught from an early age that trains were to be admired and not gone near unless they had passenger cars, were stopped, and you had a ticket or museum admission, but I was feeling a tad left out :p )

BTW-Bill, I had always heard that the Georgia Railroad was required to operate passenger service as long as it existed because of its charter with the state. Is my information wrong?
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Matt,I do not think it was "required to" as much as it got a huge tax break for doing so. Not sure if you noticed but look back at my reply 21 on this topic--which is only SIX years old-- for a little more info.

Guess you know the Georgia mixed went right through Conyers. In fact, the GA had mixed's between a couple of other genuinely small city pairs but I do not know them from memory and they got very little publicity.
 
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dan72 said:
My grandfather used to share stories with me about how he would hop trains from Red Wing, MN to Chicago. He was also a bit of a hell-raiser in his youth and it was back in a time where it was much more tolerated.
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I'm in no way condoning these actions today, but in the Great Depression my grandfather took freight trains from Copen, West Virginia, to Seattle. He recorded the locations he spent each night on the back of a business card -- about twenty nights, as I recall, on a somewhat meandering route. He gave the business card to my mother. Somewhere I've got a scan of it.

Someday I hope to piece together his route, and see how closely I can parallel it by automobile (I'm sure most of the trackage doesn't carry Amtrak). With so many cities recorded, it should be pretty easy to re-construct the route fairly closely. It must have been quite an adventure back in the day....

Eventually, while in line for odd-jobs at a church in Detroit someone observed he had a good head for numbers and offered to take him on as a clerk in an accounting firm; he impressed them enough that they paid his way through accounting school, and he ultimately wound up a full partner. Once a hobo carrying all his worldly possessions, eventually a rather-well-off CPA. The American Dream of a different era. Nowadays I think the American Dream is something more like "drop out of college, found a start-up software business, and eventually get bought by Google for hundreds of millions"!
 
Good post! ;) Down this way the immigrants coming up from Mexico used to be on all the freights heading North! Since 911 of course the trains are very closely inspected, both @ the border and in the yards as they progress North so you don't see anyone on the trains anymore! When I was a kid back in the day, there were "Hobo Jungles" in most towns since almost every town had a railroad running through it! Some of the best food I ever ate was "Rock Soup" amd "Hobo Stew" from some of the camps along my grandfathers section of the SP! (The railroad bulls didnt seem so vicious out in West Texas as they were reported to be in Cities???)These were steamer days so everytown was a water stop and most of any size had a railyard and depot!(Were talking the 50s here, not the depression! :lol: )

As to the American dream, becoming a world class athlete, a movie or tv star or a musician seems to be the dream of most kids, and of course these are the toughest fields of all to make it in! :rolleyes: What are we going to do with 3,000,000 MBAs and 10,000,000 Computer wizards??? :blink: Amtrak,Civil Service and the Medical field seem like good career fields to me! :)
 
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When I was a kid, I had the good sense to befriend another boy whose dad was the depot agent at the town I grew up in. And a few times, when I had the better sense to be visiting at the depot where he and his family lived at precisely the time the daily train came, we got to ride in the cab or in the caboose to the next town down the line, six miles away. All done with permission by the railroad crew, of course.

And the last pre-Amtrak train I rode, in 1970, was a mixed train, the City of Hinkle (or other assorted names; I've heard several) from Spokane to Hinkle, OR and back, with the same buddy and his dad.
 
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As a kid in the 70's, I hopped a PC freight from Ann Arbor to Detroit, and had a DEVIL of a time getting home. Had to call my older brother to come and "get me", 'cause where I jumped off in Deadtroit, was no where a young suburban boy should be.

My only other "hop" was while in college, took Amtrak to Chicago, then the Black Hawk (?) to Galena. Hitch-hiked from Galena to East Dubuque. Spent the nite in an old RR shack RIGHT at the intersection of a North-South line, and the East-West line, coming out of a tunnel. I bet I didn't sleep fifteen minutes all night, what with all the traffic.

Next day I hopped a slow freight X the river into Dubuque, and had to hop off fast, as it immediately entered a big classification yard. I hitch-hiked again north on US 51 or 151, and caught an IC train "headin' west. By luck I ended up in Fort Dodge, Iowa. My grand parents lived there, and gave me a dressing down like I've never had before, for "traveling that way....."

But I was broke, on spring break, and wanted to visit them. They bought me a ticket on the Dog home. Meh. Couldn't turn it down.

I would NOT ADVISE anyone to do this today, WAY to dangerous.
 
Jimisyou said:
AlanB said:
Not only is it illegal, since you are tresspassing on private property, it's down right dangerous. :eek:
Many a hobo has paid with his life for a trip, not to mention kids who think that it's cool or fun to try and hop a frieght.

While I'll allow people who may have done something like this in the past to answer your question about "have they ever hopped a freight", be warned that I will delete any posts that give advice on how to hop a freight train or condone the practice.
Click to expand...
If you are plannin on riding dont... not unless you have a good idea as to what yer doin... i ve been doin along time... be careful and dont ask punk rockers for advice
Click to expand...

... Whooz asking for advice? :lol:
 
jimhudson said:
Good post! ;) Down this way the immigrants coming up from Mexico used to be on all the freights heading North! Since 911 of course the trains are very closely inspected, both @ the border and in the yards as they progress North so you don't see anyone on the trains anymore! When I was a kid back in the day, there were "Hobo Jungles" in most towns since almost every town had a railroad running through it! Some of the best food I ever ate was "Rock Soup" amd "Hobo Stew" from some of the camps along my grandfathers section of the SP! (The railroad bulls didnt seem so vicious out in West Texas as they were reported to be in Cities???)These were steamer days so everytown was a water stop and most of any size had a railyard and depot!(Were talking the 50s here, not the depression! :lol: )
As to the American dream, becoming a world class athlete, a movie or tv star or a musician seems to be the dream of most kids, and of course these are the toughest fields of all to make it in! :rolleyes: What are we going to do with 3,000,000 MBAs and 10,000,000 Computer wizards??? :blink: Amtrak,Civil Service and the Medical field seem like good career fields to me! :)
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Something in public transit for me.
 
Bill Haithcoat said:
gswager said:
I believe that there are freight/passenger train in use in Canada, usually the northern side.  
Anyone knows about Alaska RR?
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Yes, I, too believe there are still mixed trains very far north in Canada, and that they are not part of ViaRail (names like "Ontario & Northern" come to mind) .
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It's the Ontario Northland (http://www.ontarionorthland.ca/en/index.html), and I believe the train specifically is the Polar Bear Express - It's mostly passenger, with a few box cars, a couple of flat cars to carry cars, and a special canoe car.

 
jimhudson said:
Good post! ;) Down this way the immigrants coming up from Mexico used to be on all the freights heading North! Since 911 of course the trains are very closely inspected, both @ the border and in the yards as they progress North so you don't see anyone on the trains anymore! When I was a kid back in the day, there were "Hobo Jungles" in most towns since almost every town had a railroad running through it! Some of the best food I ever ate was "Rock Soup" amd "Hobo Stew" from some of the camps along my grandfathers section of the SP! (The railroad bulls didnt seem so vicious out in West Texas as they were reported to be in Cities???)These were steamer days so everytown was a water stop and most of any size had a railyard and depot!(Were talking the 50s here, not the depression! :lol: )
Click to expand...
And they still do it south of the border, if you want to believe the movie "Sin Nombre," which, by the way, is a helluva realistic depiction of migrant travel. It contains many railroad scenes that are stunningly photographed. IMHO a terrific movie, but it could be very troubling for some viewers.
 
The college I went to had a freight train roll through campus a few days a week, pulled by an ALCO T-6. It stopped at the road crossing and students were constantly jumping on............and getting arrested.
 
It's kinda funny to see this thread pop up. I had thought about starting a similar one after seeing some people riding a freight just a few days ago. While on the s/b CS we slowed to a stop somewhere between Richmond and Emeryville to let a freight train go past us. It was a train of stacked container cars and I happened to see a guy sitting down in an area just ahead of the lower container but below normal line-of-sight (I was in an upper roomette on the left side of our train) and then a few cars later I saw 2 more people (with some backpacks and a guitar case) in the same spot. I had really thought that the days of the hobo had died with the container cars taking over for boxcars but I guess that I was wrong.
 
KOSCIUSKO COUNTY, Ind. (Indiana's NewsCenter) - Seven people who police said hitched a ride on a CSX freight train bound for Baltimore face criminal charges.

The seven jumped the train and were found in two separate cars.

All seven told investigators they got on the train in Chicago and were traveling to Baltimore to attend a religious gathering

http://www.indianasnewscenter.com/news/local/95349909.html
 
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