interesting news stories about freight train riders (long)

SPORTS ACTIVE: Long train running

Mark MacKenzie
1,555 words
10 July 2005 -- these stories are archived forever
Independent On Sunday
10
English
(c) 2005 Independent Newspapers (UK) Limited. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, distributed or exploited in any way.

In the 1930s millions did it every day. Now it"s the last red- blooded
American adventure. Forget the road movie; today"s easy riders are
heading for the rails. Freight-hopping is back with a vengeance, says
Mark MacKenzie. It"s fast and free " just don"t get caught

In Depression-era America, illegal rail travel was more than just a
means of transport for the nation"s army of itinerant workers, or
hobos. Freight-hopping " jumping aboard a moving boxcar " was to thumb
your nose at authority, to proclaim your faith in the possibilities of
pastures new. For those in search of work or simply the next meal,
long-distance fare-dodging was a rite of passage.

The rise of the car saw the numbers of freight-hoppers decline sharply,
but now they"re back. Inspired by the writings of American road icons
such as Jack Kerouac and Woody Guthrie, "yuppie hobos" have taken this
uniquely American phenomenon and given it a new twist. Across the
continent, growing numbers of thrill-seekers are launching themselves
aboard moving freight trains and travelling thousands of miles in the
name of good old- fashioned adventure.

So what is exactly is responsible for this rolling-stock renaissance?
The evidence available in the various online chatrooms and weblogs
devoted to the activity suggests the modern freight-hopper is young,
educated and affluent. Which makes a 51-year-old criminal lawyer based
in Silver City, New Mexico an " almost " ideal spokesman for the new
freight generation. Duffy Littlejohn is the author of Hopping Freight
Trains in America " a "how-to" guide including everything from types of
trains to optimum boarding speeds " and a book widely acknowledged as
the freight-hoppers" bible. Littlejohn has been hitching rides for more
than 30 years, and attributes the rise of this unique counter-culture
to a reaction against increasingly curtailed civil liberties in modern
America.

"There"s a very large minority in the US that feels increasingly
disassociated from the mainstream, they"re disappointed in the
direction the country is moving in and would prefer not to do it like
Mom and Pop," Littlejohn says. "They"re looking for alternative ways of
living and being, and one of the ways of doing that is riding trains."

Littlejohn"s hobo alter ego was born in 1970, during a cycling trip
from San Francisco to Los Angeles. "One day in Watsonville [California]
a friend and I watched this long, slow freight train go by made up
almost entirely of open boxcars," he says. "We knew the train was going
north, but that was all.

"We jumped on and rode it to Oakland, where we immediately wound up in
jail, charged under California"s old juvenile apprehension law for
"leading an idle, dissolute, lewd and immoral life". Littlejohn"s
incarceration lasted less than 24 hours; his obsession with trains a
little longer.

After graduating from high school, he spent the next five years riding
trains all over the US. "I rode west of the Mississ-ippi mainly, but
also in the east and Alaska and Canada," he says. "Back then, a lot of
the guys were Vietnam veterans with mental-health or drug-abuse
problems."

During the Depression it is estimated that on any given day, as many as
four million Americans were travelling illegally on the railroads in
search of work. "The first hobos rode the rails when the American Civil
War ended [in 1865]," explains Littlejohn. "They resented the railroad
companies charging people a fortune, so they just climbed on."

When Littlejohn began freight-hopping, he did so alongside the remnants
of a dying breed. "The old-style hobos were fast disappearing when I
started," he says, "doing what they called "catching the westbound"".
Like their predecessors, modern freight-hoppers have adopted much of
the hobo slang that sprang up during life on the rails. "Dynamiting the
train" was to snap the airbrakes to bring the train to a temporary
halt. "Catching the westbound", on the other hand, was more terminal,
the final journey to that great switching-yard in the sky.

"Unlike in the Depression," says Littlejohn, "today"s freight-hoppers
see it as more of a sport; you"ll never find a more exciting game of
adult hide and seek."

In terms of how fit you need to be, Littlejohn aims to board trains
travelling around 6mph, "doable for most people. "If you"re climbing on
to a ladder carrying a backpack, 8 or 9mph is probably tops. That"s
when you need some agility. Being tall is an advantage, and you need to
be able to hold on. The crucial step up is what we call "nailing the
train".

Littlejohn advises would-be hoppers to choose their rolling stock
carefully. For beginners, he suggests the boxcar, often to be found
with both doors open. For a more "out there" ride, he advises a hopper
or grainer carriage. "These have rounded sides, and on the platform at
the back the air is still enough to light a match."

How yuppie hobos pass the time once aboard is a matter of personal
preference. Some take in the view, others thumb dog-eared classics of
road literature. Those in search of a more animated passage jump from
car to car, at night if they"re feeling really brave.

Between the wars, hobos developed a sophisticated series of signs to
advise fellow travellers of the amenities or dangers present in
railside neighbourhoods. From an alphabet of up to 500 pictograms,
symbols were scratched into trees or fence posts: nice lady; mean dog;
man with gun; doctor lives here.

The modern hobo, unsurprisingly, uses the rather more sophisticated
medium of the internet. "There"s a lot of information exchanged
online," explains Littlejohn. "Where to board, which routes are better
policed. The hoppers visiting chatrooms range in age from 15 to 30, and
a lot more women are getting involved."

In addition to the half a million or so miles Littlejohn believes he
has clocked up in the US, he has also travelled extensively in South
America and Europe. "In Europe it"s much easier," he says, "because not
many people do it. The trains are shorter and many are electric. It"s
much more densely populated, but the sensation is roughly the same."

In 1981, Littlejohn parked his hopping days in a siding for while to
attend law school, and today is at his most animated when defending the
legality of his beloved pastime. "In America [the railroads] are
private property, but one has to ask where that private property came
from," he says. "Most of it was public land granted to the railroads
after the Civil War, which mitigates the private property argument to
some extent.

"How would I rate the seriousness of the offence? In the larger scheme
of criminal activity, not that a big a deal. Judges and district
attorneys don"t get excited by this."

Charges levelled at Littlejohn thus far include "endangering the life
of railroad men in the operation of their equipment" and "obstructing
interstate transport".

"What harm am I doing the railroad?" he counters. "Maybe costing them
25 cents in diesel."

In years gone by, says Littlejohn, police would simply demand that
hoppers leave railroad premises. "After 9/11, the terrorist issue means
the level of security has been raised significantly, and this has
raised the level of difficulty of the sport. Not all that long ago,
railroad workers were kind of thrilled to see us; I"ve had some give me
their lunch. In 1997, I was riding a 75-car coal train through
Tennessee and the driver let me drive the train down an 11,000ft
mountain pass " it was so intense, a hobo"s fantasy."

While the internet has provided the modern hobo with a medium to
communicate, not all technology has been as welcome. "The cellphone is
a major problem," says Littlejohn. "Anybody can pop open their
cellphone and call the railroad company. The cellphone has made us real
sitting ducks. I"m not saying everybody calls us in " just the
bootlicking few. It"s just another element of our privacy being
erased."

"For the railroad companies, the freight-hopper is the red under the
bed," says Littlejohn, but increased security has only made him more
determined. "Freight-hopping," he says, "is the last red-blooded
American adventure; watching the great landscape roll by is part of our
heritage."

But scratch the surface of this romantic rhetoric, and you just might
catch a glimpse of a less glamorous truth. "I suppose what a number of
us are reluctant to admit is that freight-hoppers are essentially rail
fans," says Littlejohn. He is referring to that thin red line of
anoraks known in Britain as train spotters. Sadly, says Littlejohn, a
rift has recently developed between hobos and the more hardcore rail
fans. "They think we spoil the fun for everyone, getting them kicked
out of yards when they want to make videos or take photos. I think we
should just learn to get along; to love one another as much as we love
trains."

The wander years; Riding the rails during the Depression was a way of
life for many -- including Carmel's Theodore Sarbin

By LESLIE DUN]N
Herald correspondent
1,384 words
17 December 2004
Monterey County Herald
English
(c) Copyright 2004, Monterey County Herald. All Rights Reserved.

ASouthern Pacific freight train, its rusted boxcars clicking along the
tracks, has become a spectral archtype of the American landscape.

To Theodore Sarbin, to America in the 1930s, the train carried more
than grain and steel. It was a vehicle of hope and adventure.

Sarbin is a 93-year-old retired professor of psychology now living in
Carmel. At age 20, he wanted to see the world and left Cleveland to
ride the rails in 1931 at the onset of the Great Depression.

"I remember it was sometime in May. I took extra clothes, a frying pan
and some Bisquick. I started off hitchhiking going west."

"I got as far as Illinois and I ran into a fellow my age from New York
who said something about taking the freight trains. His name was Irv.
He was out to seek his fortune, too. We were good company for each
other."

Oh, sure there were stories about people losing their limbs hopping
freight trains. Sarbin says he never saw that, "but you learned that if
you grabbed the ladder wrong while the train was moving, it was easy to
slip and get your foot caught underneath."

You were careful.

A train had no bounds. From the top of a boxcar, the open prairies, the
blue skies above you -- this land was your land, this land was my land
-- the train could lead you anywhere.

Travelling west, sometimes with hundreds of men, they were also bearing
witness to a country "dying by inches" in the words of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.

"Some of these guys were farmers from the Dust Bowl, hoping to get out
to California where they thought there would be sunshine all the time
and you could pick grapefruits off the trees. It was hard to get into
California in 1931. They were cleaning out the railcars as they got
close to the border."

But if you were 20, you had your life ahead of you. You could watch the
sun rise over the Rocky Mountains. You helped each other.

"The train would stop in the morning and we'd get off and go into town.
We'd look for a YMCA and pay a nickel for a towel and a bar of soap.
We'd go up to a bakery. One of us would go in and ask the young woman
behind the counter 'is there any work I can do?' Sometimes they'd give
you work. Washing windows. They'd fill up a bag with bread and rolls.

"Then Irv would go in they'd say 'oh there's the basement that needs
cleaning.' We'd get more rolls."

Theodore "Ted" Sarbin was born in 1911 in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Polish
mother and a Russian father who made cigars for a living. He was one of
six children.

Sarbin says he probably read too many adventure books and was seized
with "wanderjahr" a German expression meaning "year to wander."

"It was a life without purpose," he says, "I have to admit that. You
didn't need much." Sometimes he sent his parents a two-cent postcard
from the road.

Sarbin and Irv rode the rails through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico,
Nevada. In a way, location was beside the point. He remembers the
plaintive sound of the train whistle.

"It meant moving on. I never felt sad or depressed out there. I always
thought if I went without a meal, so what? You can always get on a
freight train and go somewhere else. Maybe the girls in the next bakery
will be kinder."

Sometimes they'd walk onto a farm and work in exchange for something to
eat -- fatback bacon, cornbread, gravy. Usually it was a sandwich out
on the porch.

They'd sleep under newspapers in a park. If it rained, they discovered
you could go into a police station and they'd let you sleep in a jail
cell.

"There was no violence that I ever saw. If anything there was a spirit
of cooperation. One time In Cheyenne, Wy., Irv and I were waiting for a
train. An older hobo in his 40s asked the two if us if we'd had
anything to eat. We hadn't eaten in a couple of days. He left and came
back with coffee, lunchmeat, bread and so on. This fellow's name was
Harry. I never saw him again."

If you fell asleep on a grassy field you could never be sure what you'd
wake up to. Once it was to the sound of airplane engines. Another time
a cow stood over them chewing its cud.

You had to watch your shoes.

"I remember it was summertime in St Louis. I woke up in a park and
another hobo had his shoes stolen. So here was this fellow maybe 30
years old. Barefoot. Embarrassed to walk down the street. So I took it
upon myself to find the Salvation Army and a very understanding woman
gave me a pair of shoes. That was my turn to do a good deed for someone
else."

By autumn, Irv and Ted had crossed Wyoming into the Great Plains.
They'd seen a growing legion of footloose wanderers on the road. They
saw the ravages of poverty in rural areas.

Hobos would congregate in the jungles next to the railroad lines. "We'd
sit around the fire and talk and sometimes share food," Sarbin says.
"There was a song the old ones used to sing (about railroad baron James
J=2E Hill):

I know Jim Hill

And he's mighty fine

That's why I'm walkin down

Jim Hill's main line

Hallelujah I'm a bum."

At some point someone would ask, "are you a bum or a hobo? Bums won't
work. Hobos will. On the road you learned it was important distinction
and "sometimes," Sarbin says, "it was hard to tell the difference. If
he said he'd been there three months then you knew he was a bum."

On through Chicago, Pennsylvania, "there was much talk about the
government," Sarbin says. "People were ashamed to go on relief.
Everybody was effected by the Depression. And everyone asked why
couldn't the government do something about this?"

People were openly sympathetic to World War I vets who trekked across
country by the thousands to ask Hoover in Washington for their war
bonus. Droves of them were later dispersed in front of the capitol by
the tanks of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

"As a matter of fact," Sarbin says, "I happened to be wearing khaki
pants and shirt a lot of people thought I was one of the Bonus
marchers. Even though I was too young to be a veteran."

Eventually the train pulled into New York and "Irv and I split up. He
went home to Brooklyn and I found a room in a newsboy's dormitory and
spent two weeks walking around the bowery learning about New York."

A few weeks later Sarbin cross the border into Ohio and went home. It
was December. Christmastime. "I was glad to get out of the elements,"
Sarbin says, "except it was a little dull."

His father borrowed $20 from a friend to pay Sarbin's tuition at Ohio
State University -- an investment which in time justified his exile.
Sarbin's career as a psychologist centers around the meaning of the
stories we all acquire in our lives.

Sarbin taught psychology for two decades at the University of
California, Berkeley, then went on to teach at the University of
California at Santa Cruz where he is currently a professor emeritus of
psychology and criminology.

In 1999 he was the recipient of the Award for Distinguished Theoretical
and Philosophical Contribu
tions to Psychology by the American Psychological Association.

"In retrospect my life on the road may have been a foolish thing to do
but it helped me recognize the diversity of life, the capacity of
people to be kind and helpful to strangers."

"I was a member of a dispossessed segment of society. I think that's
always been in the background of my own story."
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &




World;Nation; A

hobos chase trains to capture freedom

Amy Bowen
Staff
4,398 words
5 June 2005
St. Cloud Times
5A
English
(c) Copyright 2005, St Cloud Times. All Rights Reserved.

He lives the American Dream: a great job, a good home and a wife and
two kids. But every so often, he gives it all up, risking life and the
law, to hop a train to chase his other life - his hobo world.

Beware of tramps.

It was a familiar warning from Todd Waters' mother when he was growing
up in Keokuk, Iowa, a sleepy railroad town on the Mississippi River.

The uninvited visitors were thought to lurk around the river's bluffs.
The tramps, or boogeymen, rode the freight trains, sporting unwashed
hair, grimy clothes and what some thought was a sinister look.

As a boy, he spent his daytime hours defending imaginary jungles,
castles and forts in the woods around his town. But at night, he
worried the boogeyman would climb the porch to his bedroom and steal
him.

It finally happened: He met his boogeyman.

ORONO - This is a story of a man living a double life.

Todd Waters, 57, epitomizes the American Dream. A St. Cloud State
University graduate, he lives in a lake home in the posh suburb of
Orono.

He's a successful businessman who helps his wife run an award-winning
brand marketing firm. He declined to say how much he was worth but says
his family lives comfortably. They have two teen-agers and travel to
exotic locales such as Africa and Asia.

But several times a year, he becomes Adman, a modern-day hobo who
chases trains by day and sleeps under the stars at night. He leaves
home with $3, T-shirts, shorts, jeans, insect repellent, and a few odds
and ends to wander the United States and Canada.

Waters proudly embraces his life at home and on the road. He has two
tight-knit families and isn't afraid to have his worlds overlap.

He helps hobos communicate with police and government officials. He
helps mainstream society understand what he calls "the underworld."

Neither sees the beauty in each other, he said.

"I'm sad because (mainstream society) will miss out on greatness that
they'll never see," Waters said. "And I'm sad that the tramps and hobos
will miss out on the greatness of polite society."

History

Waters listened to the roar of the trains racing through Keokuk,
wondering where they took the boogeymen from the bluffs.

At 13, his horizons broadened when his family moved to Wayzata.

Craving adventure, he started hitchhiking as a sophomore in high
school.

"It was like the world was a big school building," Waters said.

Hitchhiking turned to rail-riding in 1972.

Police in Wyoming had arrested Waters for hitchhiking, but he talked
them into letting him catch a bus ride home.

Instead, he jumped an eastbound Union Pacific grain train. On top of a
train car, Waters watched the sun set in a flurry of colors. He watched
as the train whizzed through towns and chugged along desolate country
roads.

"I spent the whole night watching the prairie go by," he said. "I
thought, Christ, why didn't I do this before?"

On the road

A messy divorce in 1974 and his yearning for adventure forced Waters on
the road again. He sold his

St. Cloud business, Waters Advertising, and left his family and
friends.

He traveled alone, zig-zagging across the country and Canada for more
than two years.

"I didn't want to be around people," Waters said. "I was running away
and not running to."

The underworld quickly absorbed him. Like hobos from past generations,
he learned how to tell where a train was coming from and where it was
going. He knew which cars to sleep in - trains carrying woodchips from
the Northwest were a treat because they gave a warm and easy ride.

He slept under bridges. Dumpsters contained dinner feasts. Waters
learned what restaurants threw away the best food. He learned to pirate
electricity off pop machines. As he traveled, he washed dishes, windows
and just about everything else for food or money.

Slowly, a family of hobos adopted Waters. An elder hobo gave him a
street name, Adman. He quickly learned the unwritten rules of the road.


Hobos call each other by road names.

They never ask about each other's pasts.

And they look out for each other.

Water's new status came with some benefits. He stayed with other hobos
in "jungles"- heavily wooded areas near railroad division points. Here,
hobos share spirited discussions, sing at the top of their lungs and
listen to the haunting melodies of fiddles or harmonicas of the
musically gifted.

"It's a state of mind," he said. "You're with people who are considered
undesirable. They become your family. Their greatness is undeniable."

Family

Even hobos fall in love.

Waters fell for Dori Molitor of Rockville at President Jimmy Carter's
inauguration ball in 1977.

During a break from riding the rails, he'd met up with a friend from
his protesting days at St. Cloud State. State legislator Rick Nolan
asked Waters to manage his campaign for the

U=2ES. House of Representatives.

Waters and Molitor met while working on Nolan's successful campaign.

"I truly love him," Molitor said. "He is such a compassionate, caring,
honest person, who truly has a connection for all kinds of people."

They married 24 years ago and have two children, Alex, 17, and Andrew,
13, and two fat cats, Buddy Boy and Heidi.

Waters is a regular kind of father and husband. He feeds the cats, eats
dinner with his wife and loves to attend black-tie events.

Todd Waters' family accepts his passion to ride the rails. It's simply
part of him, Molitor said. His family allows him to escape for a
weekend or weeks at a time. He comes back refreshed, Molitor said.

"It refills his soul," Molitor said. "People do a lot of things. This
is Todd's."

Molitor sometimes is annoyed when he leaves. Juggling a family and a
business is hard work, she said. But she understands the need. "If he
didn't go, I don't think I'd like him," she said.

Molitor doesn't worry about her husband on the road. He's extremely
street smart, she said.

"I worry about my kids more than I worry about him," she said.

Merging

Molitor knows the drill all too well. "Will you accept a collect call?"
means a hobo friend wants to be picked up. And she answers without
hesitation.

Molitor knew about Todd Waters' dual lives before she married him. She
rode the rails once when they were first married. She loved the
therapeutic quality of listening to the rails at night. But she hated
catching the trains and fleeing train security. She hasn't gone since,
but she is quick to offer any of his hobo friends a place to stay and a
warm meal.

Their children have grown up with the hobo culture. They visit jungles
with their dad and listen for hours to the hobos' stories. A hobo even
baby-sat the children when their parents attended the theater.

"It's hard to be afraid with something I've grown up with," Andrew
Waters said. "He's careful. He knows the road. He's a professional
hobo."

Freedom makes the lifestyle appealing, Waters said. People yearn for
it, he said. Once while riding through a prairie town, he waved at a
woman hanging up wash. She dropped her basket, waved her arms and ran

after the train.

"My purpose in life is to make people homesick for their freedom," he
said. "This is my opportunity to do that."

Business

Although he might not seem like it, Waters has a mind for business.

In 1987, he and his wife founded Waters Molitor, a Minneapolis
marketing branding company that promotes products to women.

Waters Molitor is one of the top 100 marketing firms in the United
States, with clients such as Dunkin'

Donuts, Chex, Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and Malt-O-Meal cereals.

Waters left the firm eight years ago because he got tired of the
repetitive nature of everyday business.

Molitor runs the firm but often looks to her husband for creativity.
Last year, he teamed with his wife to consult on projects.

He now has a small office there and comes and goes

as he pleases.

Dangers

Riding the rails has a definite dark side. People have pulled knives on
him, and he's seen bodies in Dumpsters.

There will always be "bad apples," but the majority of hobos don't want
to cause problems, Waters said.

"The rule of the road is the law of decency," he said. "Do unto others
as you'd like to have done to you."

Now that he's in his 50s, Waters considers traveling with other hobos
for safety.

"I'm vulnerable out there right now," he said. "Half of it is bluffing
when you're white-haired and fat."

The bigger problem is that trains aren't safe. Just ask Preacher Steve,
a friend who lost his toes after a freight train ran over them.

Waters suffered from the stomach flu once while traveling. He spent
three days vomiting under a cattle loading ramp in Montana until he
felt better. "It's a hard life," he said. "You don't eat well. You
don't get medical attention."

Jumping a train has become more difficult since Sept. 11. Cameras and
guards constantly watch the rail yards for trespassers.

"You hide," Waters said, when he spots a guard. "You're sitting in the
weeds saying, 'busted, busted, busted.'"

Sometimes he gets busted. He has a long list of misdemeanors on his
record and has spent many nights in jails.

Hobo king

Britt, Iowa, might not seem like a hotbed for hobo activity, but every
August, the town of about 2,000 hosts the National Hobo Convention.

The town, about 130 miles north of Des Moines, became home to the
traditional celebration 105 years ago. The hobos created their own
organization, Tourist Union #63, in the late 1800s to ride the rails
for free.

Now, 10,000 to 20,000 hobos, tramps, families and the curious come for
the six-day event, Britt Mayor Jim Nelson said. Festivities include
bake sales - with goods made by the hobos - craft and rummage sales, a
poetry reading, and the hobo king and queen cornation.

The town also has a hobo cemetery, a hobo-themed restaurant and the
Hobo Foundation, which protects the culture and history of hobos. The
newest addition will be a hobo museum, which will be organized by
hobos, including Waters.

Waters received the highest honor from fellow hobos last year: Crowd
applause determined he would be hobo king for a one-year term.

He takes his position seriously, using it to raise awareness about hobo
culture.

"He's kind of a free spirit kind of guy, who has part of a business in
Minneapolis, who likes to ride the trains every once in a while,"
Nelson said.

Another mission Waters feels passionate about is identifying the
Unknown Hobo, a man found frozen to death in December 2003 in a
Minneapolis boxcar. He hangs fliers in jungles, gives them to hobos he
sees and works with law enforcement to keep the case open.

The unknown hobo is buried in a north Minneapolis cemetery with a
marker made by Waters and his son. He said he hopes to one day bury the
hobo in Britt with a name.

=C6

And it was in Britt a few years ago that Waters finally confronted a
hobo who caused him to lock his bedroom windows in Keokuk.

One night he was chatting in a bar with an older hobo, Side Door
Pullman Kid.

Side Door Pullman Kid told about his adventures of setting up a jungle
in a tiny Iowa town on the Mississippi River bluffs.

Waters finally faced his boogeyman.

"The hair went up on my arms. I said, 'My God, man, you're my
boogeyman.'"

If you're caught, hobo lifestyle comes at a price

By Amy Bowen



Trespass on the rails, and you could pay the price.

It's a warning that railroad officials want to get across to folks
intrigued by the idea of riding the trains or even walking along the
tracks.

Most trespassers are on foot, and it's estimated the railroad catches
as many as 20,000 a year, said Steve Forsberg, general director of
public affairs for the BNSF Railway based in Kansas City, Kan.

"Freight trains are not meant to carry people," Forsberg said. "It's
very dangerous."

Catching people jumping trains or riding on trains is rare, he said.

"I don't know if it's the forbidden fruit aspect or the thrill of doing
something illegal," said Jim Kvedaras, senior manager of U.S. public
and governmental affairs for Canadian National Railway.

Specific trespassing numbers were not available from BNSF Railway or
Canadian National Railway.

Trespassing laws vary from state to state. Locally, St. Cloud city
attorney Jan Petersen said he hasn't prosecuted any cases of railroad
trespassing.

The arrests are handled by railroad, state or local police departments,
said Warren Flatau, public affairs specialist for the Federal Railroad
Administration in Washington.

Despite the warnings, trespassing remains a major issue for the Federal
Railroad Administration.

About 500 people die every year because they trespass on railroad
property, Flatau said. In 2004, Minnesota had seven deaths and nine
injuries. Stearns County had one death in 2004, he said.

the law

Minnesota law says anyone caught trespassing on railroad tracks can be
charged with a misdemeanor.

Anyone caught trespassing at a rail yard can be charged with a gross
misdemeanor, which has a maximum penality of one year in jail and
$3,000 in fines, according to St. Cloud city attorney Jan Petersen.

Rails draw diverse group

By Amy Bowen



minneapolis jewel

The rumble of trains flying past her tiny Minneapolis home stir mixed
feelings in Julianna Porrazzo-Ray.

The sounds lulled her to sleep as a child. Now, the sounds bring an
urge: Where are they going? Who's on board? What's the train carrying?

Better known as Minneapolis Jewel on the rails, she's resisted the urge
to hop a freight train for almost four years.

"But never say never when talking to a hobo," Minneapolis Jewel said.
"You never know. It's in their blood."

Minneapolis Jewel rode her first train in 1979 after reading about
hobos in a magazine.

Her destination? The annual Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa.

For years, she was a fixture in a male-dominated world. Two lessons
helped her survive: Lay low and voice opinions discreetly. Slowly, she
gained the respect of hobos and became a repeat queen of the hobos.

She even met her husband on the road. Darrel Ray, whose road name is
Tuck, is 12 years her junior but always had a fondness for the silent,
powerful woman.

Tuck grew up on the road. He left his home in Texas at 15. He didn't
have a Social Security card, a birth certificate or any family outside
of the hobos.

Minneapolis Jewel gave her husband of four years a home and a family.

Minneapolis Jewel and Tuck still travel to Britt every summer and still
have a long list of hobo friends. Minneapolis Jewel remains the
caregiver of the hobo family, treating them when they're ill, helping
them find employment and giving them a place to rest.

Life on the rails has changed, she said. "Unsavory characters," drugs
and alcohol have taken over the population. Minneapolis Jewel worries a
piece of history will be lost.

"There are young kids riding, but if they stop riding, who's going to
be left?" she asked.

uncle freddie

Uncle Freddie is known as a bridger on the rails.

At 74, Freddie Liberatore has ridden steam and modern trains - an honor
not many can claim.

Uncle Freddie didn't ride full time for most of his life. He owned a
painting company in Los Angeles when he met his wife of 10 years,
Bette.

Uncle Freddie and a group of friends flew into the Twin Cities and
hopped a train to Brainerd. At a local bar, he met the feisty Bette.
She was not impressed.

"They looked pretty scrunchy when they came in here," said Bette
Liberatore, who lives in Maple Grove with her husband.

Uncle Freddie retired from the hobo life. One of his friends rode the
rails well into his 80s, said Bette Liberatore, 59.

"I don't see anything attractive about it," Bette Liberatore said. "It
must be a guy thing."

preacher steve

Hitchhiking led Steve Stewart, or Preacher Steve, to the rail yards.

He spent 27 years on the road traveling job to job before retiring in
1998. Preacher Steve still rides every once in a while, but now he's
married to his wife, Lea, or Half Track, and has children. Preacher
Steve of Annandale recently graduated from technical college and wants
to be a licensed practical nurse.

The hobo lifestyle is hard, he said. He braved temperatures of 50
degrees below zero and lost toes when he was run over by a freight
train. The road wears on your body, he said.

"Twenty-five or 26 years on the night shift was a lot," he said. "I
figured that was enough, and I'd get a day job."

can you help identify the Unknown hobo?

Todd Waters, also known as Adman, wants to find the name of an
unidentified man found in a Canadian Pacific Railroad train car in
Minneapolis. The man, thought to be in his early 40s, was found frozen
to death Dec. 16, 2003. The train left Chicago, with stops in
Wisconsin, before reaching Minnesota.

For details, visit http://homepage.mac.com/admanwaters .

Who's who on the road

According to Waters:

| Hobos: Work and ride trains to travel to different jobs. Hobos are
independent and don't participate in welfare or other government
programs. Many are driven by social issues.

| Youngins: Younger hobos.

| Ancients: Older hobos.

| Working: Hobos who work and travel. They do day-labor jobs, such as
farm work or construction.

| Cause-related: Hobos who travel to protests or squats. Many stay in
abandoned buildings until police raid them. They travel from city to
city.

| Tramps: Don't work, are usually on government assistance or beg for
food. They ride from town to town. They drink more than the hobos.

| Bums: Don't ride or work. Drink a lot.

| Gypsies: More common in Europe. Usually generations of families who
travel together. Don't ride the rails.

separate fact from myths

Myths about hobos, with explanations by Waters.

Myth: All hobos cause problems.

Truth: While there are some troublemakers, the majority are
peace-loving men and women.

Myth: Hobos are men with nothing better to do.

Truth: Men, women and children relied on railroads to take them to
farming jobs at harvest time during the Great Depression. People still
ride the rails because of the sense of freedom, the need for work and
the adventure. They do not rely on government assistance.

Myth: Rail riding is illegal.

Truth: This is true. Railroads have strict rules and penalties if you
are caught. But hobos say the benefits outweigh the risks.

"It's free transportation," said Jon Angus MacLeod, aka Texasmadman.
"It's the last red-blooded American adventure."

Myth: Hobos are uneducated.

Truth: Some are, some aren't. You can find college students,
professors, entrepreneurs and even retired police officers.

Myth: Hobos don't have families.

Truth: Some have husbands, wives and children. Some marry each other.

Log on for more

|^ http://homepage.mac.com/admanwaters - Site maintained by the Adman.

|^ www.hobo.com - Run by the Hobo Foundation in Britt, Iowa. Offers
information on donations, hobos in the Hobo Cemetery, alerts, best
train routes and subscription to the Hobo News.

|^ www.brittchamberofcommerce.com/Hobo/index.html - The Britt Chamber
of Commerce's Hobo Convention Web site.

|^ http://www.epcc.edu/ftp/Homes/monica...n_language.htm
- A term paper about hobo sign language.

|^ www.worldpath.net/~minstrel - News for hobos.

|^ http://hobotramp .

0catch.com/index.html - Run by Santa Fe Jack with hobo links, photos
and an online newspaper

|^ www.myhappyhobodays.homestead.com/Story.html - Stories from
California Kid.

More online ...

At www.sctimes.com/hobo :

|^Send questions to Todd Waters, a hobo from Orono. Answers will be
posted online.

|^Links to audio of Waters telling his hobo stories.

|^Additional photos of hobo jungles in the Twin Cities.

|^Links related to hobo history and current happenings.

|^Help identify the Unknown Hobo.

|^Waters' photo gallery of his hobo friends.

|^The tale of Texasmadman, a gifted storyteller.

20 things to take on a trip

When Todd Waters hits the rail yards as Adman, he takes a bag
containing:

Body bag: Used for sleeping, keeping out wind and dew. Available at
Army surplus stores.

Ground cloth: To protect the body bag.

Cloth carrying bag: Easier to carry than metal-framed backpacks used by
younger hobos.

Light clothing: Layers are essential. Jacket, jeans, socks, T-shirts.

Walking boots: Comfort is a must.

Metal spoon: For eating. At hobo jungles, if you don't have a spoon,
you buy the beer.

Plastic spoon: Fuel to light a fire.

Water spigot handle: To tap into buildings with outside water access.

P-38 can opener: To open cans of food.

Needle: For sewing and mending.

Dental floss: For mending or stitching wounds because it's stronger
than thread.

Super glue: For "self-repair."

Leatherman: A tool that includes knives, pliers, can openers, bottle
openers, etc.

Rope: To tie hammocks to rail cars; to help with protection from rain.

Hammock: For sleep during trips on the trains and in jungles.

Carabiners: Holds ropes and hammocks.

Flea collars: Worn around ankles to protect against chiggers and fleas.


Bug repellent: To keep away mosquitoes, flies, other insects.

Dryer sheets: Worn under hats to ward off gnats.

Digital camera, computer: Not normally carried by hobos, but he takes
photos on the road.

Friends, faces dot travels while on the road

Todd Waters, also known as Adman, documents his hobo friends while on
the road. Here are some of them, their personalities captured in
Adman's own words. He also included portraits of himself by an unknown
photographer.

dante

Dante lives his life like he talks, in compressed declarative busts of
truncated insights. Yet he's not the hyper type. His movements are slow
and intentional - like a spider's walk - his long arm patterned in
Irish freckles, extends before him, making a broad sweep as he makes
his point - a wisp of cigarette smoke trailing his long fingers through
the air.

new york slim and his baby

"He (God) doesn't care what we accumulate, he doesn't care how far we
come, he doesn't care what we have at the end of it all. I think what
he cares about when we get there is what did you do. Did you love
somebody that was a goofball. Did you love somebody that was an Angel.
Do you love some body. I think that's what it's about and I don't want
to miss that." - New York Slim and his dog, Baby.

April is as independent and unstoppable as she is beautiful. And losing
her leg under a freight car 10 years ago hasn't slowed her down one
bit. I see a lot more women on the road today, nearly as many women as
men along the West Coast. I've often asked them why they dared take
their first ride. Most tell me they never knew they couldn't. Our
"sisters of the road" are a new breed of hoboes. They're not women's
rights activists. They were born with rights, they expect them, they
take them, they are them and they ride like the wind to wherever they
please. The last time I saw April was late last summer in a little
jungle down in Wisconsin. I think she was headed south. All I could see
was her early morning silhouette walking down a little path toward the
rail yard. She was carrying her framed backpack and everything she
owned on her back. I noticed her dog was wearing the little saddlebags
April had made her to carry her own food and water dish.

It seems April's self-reliance has rubbed off on her dog.

klikity klak

"You really don't need money in America. There's no country that wastes
as much as America. If you're someone like me who's riding trains for
free, you're eatin' for free and I don't have any addiction that costs
me any money - my only addiction is food and fiddle and I've got that
covered all ready - I really don't need money." - Klikity Klak

Times photos by Jason Wachter,

Todd Waters leads a double life: He is part successful business man,
part hobo riding trains and living on streets throughout the United
States and Canada.

Waters and his wife, Dori Molitor, look at photographs he has taken of
the

hobos he's met while riding the rails as Adman.

Times photos by Jason Wachter,

Todd Waters walks along the railroad tracks in St. Paul, a comfortable
place for him. He spent many years on the road living and riding rail
cars. Waters has since settled down with his wife and two children in
Orono. But he still is called back to the hobo life a couple of times a
year.

Waters walks into the building that houses the award-winning
advertising business Waters Molitor.

Waters shows his son, Andrew, 13, the jacket he has had signed by his
hobo friends.

Waters can tell which trains are going where and what they are hauling
in this rail yard in Fridley.

Waters says there are differences between rail riders.

Waters is on a quest to find the identity of this man. To help, he is
hanging fliers in jungles throughout the country.

The grave of the Unknown Hobo is in a north Minneapolis cemetery.

Document XSCT000020050609e1650000i

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Retrieving article(s)...

Article 1


Riding the Rail ; Hobos often mistakenly thought of as lazy, uneducated


Bob Holliday
1,053 words
29 April 2005
The Pantagraph
D1
English
Copyright (c) 2005 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All
rights reserved.

"Ingenious tramps and hobos rode everywhere. They learned to ride a
train "the way an Indian brave could ride his horse: They could hang
onto belly, back, neck or rump, and get there."

"The whistling of a locomotive on a still night had a lure,
unexplainable, yet strong, like the light which leads a moth to
destruction."

- Clark C. Spence, writing in The Western Historical Quarterly

-----------

BLOOMINGTON - Don't call hobos lazy around Dawn DiVenti, who will tell
you a true hobo traveled in constant search of work.

Don't call them uneducated, either. DiVenti will inform you hobos often
had carpentry and masonry skills and were well read.

Finally, don't call them dirty. "Hobo jungles," as hobo encampments
near railroads were called, were most often near water so hobos could
keep clean.

The Rockford librarian, who will speak about hobos Thursday at the
Bloomington Public Library, enjoys studying hobos and dispelling myths
about them.

"They are the neatest group of people I've met in my life," said the
self-professed "hobo at heart."

DiVenti, 37, was crowned at the 2004 annual hobo convention in Britt,
Iowa as "The Queen of the Hobos."

Though DiVenti said today's hobos share a sense of brotherhood with
early hobos who rode the rails, many travel to hobo functions such as
the annual convention by car and tote cell phones.

DiVenti, known in hobo circles as "Sunrise," has taken her educational
campaign as far as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Her free Bloomington talk will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the library's
community room.

Besides correcting misconceptions about hobos, who numbered more than 1
million in Depression-era America, she will sing hobo and railroad
songs.

Hobos were commonplace in America from the 1870s until 1950, said
DiVenti, who teaches a course about hobos at a junior college in
Rockford.

She estimates there are fewer than 1,000 hobos today.

The few who continue to ride the rails are mostly younger, she said,
adding that hopping fast-moving modern-day trains powered by diesel
locomotives isn't easy. Older steam-powered locomotives, by contrast,
stopped frequently for water.

Bloomington railroad buff Mike Matejka said few box cars are open
anymore anyway, but hobos hopped trains in Bloomington until about
1950.

"We had direct lines to St. Louis, Chicago and Indianapolis. This was a
good crossroads point," he said, adding "hopping the freight was a
quick and easy way to the next job" even though it was and remains
illegal and dangerous.

The increasing mechanization of agriculture, however, meant less demand
for the seasonal workers many hobos were, Matejka said.

Paved roads and cheap cars meant migratory workers turned instead to
highways. These hobos were affectionately known as "rubber tramps,"
DiVenti said.

Whether they traveled by rail or highway, hobos "were a very necessary
part of the labor force," said Mark Wyman, a retired professor of
history at Illinois State University. Wyman is working on a book about
hobos and itinerant workers in the American West.

Wyman said that as America grew, there were "tremendous labor needs for
short periods."

Hobos filled this need, which included harvesting sugar beets in
Colorado and Utah; apples in Washington state and Oregon, and cotton in
Texas and Arizona, he said.

Migrant workers, who Wyman called the modern-day hobos, travel by car,
not rail, he said.

While the rail-rider is mostly a relic, part of the exhibit Journey
Through the Great Depression at the McLean County Museum of History in
Bloomington reminds visitors of that past.

Museum Curator Susan Hartzold said hobos were "a part of the culture
and those who lived through the Great Depression recalled them (hobos)
vividly."

Carl "Bud" Ekstam, an 84-year-old Bloomington resident, has fond
memories of hobos, who he and boyhood friends visited at a hobo
encampment near his childhood home on the west side of Bloomington.

The hobo way of life began to die out as the economy improved and
people no longer needed to travel to find work, he said. Ekstam recalls
many being blacksmiths, carpenters and brick masons.

"They were looking for work," Ekstam said. "Mostly we just sat around
and listened to their stories."

----------- Who are they?

- A hobo is a person who travels in search of work. This is in contrast
to a tramp, who travels but won't work, and a bum who neither travels
nor works.

- The name hobo first started appearing in the early 1800s.

- During the Great Depression, when there were more than 1 million
hobos, over 8,000 were women and more than 200,000 were children.

- Many hobos had a specific skill, such as music, gardening and
repairing shoes.

- The center of hobo life was the hobo jungle, a congregating area
usually located near railroad tracks and water.

- Hobos had monikers like Hobo Joe and Cinder Box Cindy.

- Although hobos had no specific style of dress, ball caps were common,
as were long sleeves and denim pants.

- Many hobos carried a backpack, called a bindle, for extra clothes,
food, eating utensils and tools.

- A common adversary of hobos was the railroad police, often nicknamed
"the bull."

SOURCES: Various Web sites about hobos, including: http://
members.tripod.com/HoboJeepers/hobo.htm

--------It's illegal

While author Jack London and others may have romanticized hobos and
train hopping, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern Corp. said train
hoppers aren't adventurers.

"We call them trespassers. Hopping trains is illegal and we do all we
can to discourage it," said Robin Chapman.

The struggle by railroads and police to stop train hopping continues
today, Chapman said, adding that nowadays the train hoppers are mostly
thrill seekers.

"People are doing it for adventure," Chapman said, noting it's
dangerous as well as illegal.

Hobo camps like this 1930s camp on Bloomington's west side were usually
near railroad tracks. Hobos were commonplace in America from the 1870s
until about 1950. Dawn DiVenti, of Rockford, will speak about hobos at
the Bloomington Public Library on Thursday. Dawn DiVenti, of Rockford,
who was crowned "The Queen of the Hobos" at the 2004 annual hobo
convention in Britt, Iowa, will speak about hobos at the Bloomington
Public Library on Thursday.


******************************************



Colorado College grad plans to ride the rails this summer

By DAVE PHILIPPS
The Gazette
1,338 words
2 June 2005
00:00
Associated Press Newswires
English
(c) 2005. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) - Joe "Giuseppe" Spadafora graduated from
Colorado College on May 23 with a degree in political science. The next
day, he walked down to the railroad tracks under the Cimarron Street
bridge to hop a train.

Hotshot, junker, boxcar, piggyback -- it didn't really matter what type
of train. He had a few twenties hidden in his shoe, a backpack stuffed
with a blanket, a poncho, a little jerky and dried fruit, and was ready
to catch out on his first trip in a summer of hoboing.

Spadafora, 21, whose thin face and dark sideburns make him look like a
young Bob Dylan, has been riding the rails since his freshman year --
alone and with friends, on short hops and overnights. He's also
hitchhiked thousands of miles.

This summer he plans to head to Los Angeles to try his hand at the
movie industry, but first he wanted to hop a few more trains, starting
with a quick overnight to Pueblo with friend and fellow CC alumnus Jim
Dziura, who was riding the rails for the first time.

Colorado College isn't known for cranking out conformists. The school
gives students grants to study everything from weaving in Guatemala to
climbing Denali. Still, a freewheeling hobo probably isn't what people
would expect of one of Colorado's most exclusive, and expensive,
colleges.

"Most of my friends have internships or jobs already for the summer.
Definitely none are going train hopping," Spadafora said as he crouched
on his heels in the broken glass near the tracks.

His mother, Beth Spadafora, seemed to wish he had an internship or a
job, too, as she got ready to leave after graduation. She's uneasy
about train hopping. "It's just so dangerous," she said.

It's also illegal. Simply entering a railroad's right-of-way in
Colorado can mean a $50 to $750 fine and/or time in jail.

Still, there is something about those trains, how they hiss and clack
and shake the ground, how the steel feels cool and exhilarating when
you grab the ladder and swing up, how the solid grit of riding through
the night stands out from all the mushy flip-flop philosophizing of
undergrad life.

Lines of freight cars have captivated Spadafora since he was a kid. He
used to count the cars as they went by, and once he discovered they
could carry a guy to see all sorts of places and things, he was hooked.


"It's probably cliche to say this, but there's a real sense of freedom,
adventure, I just love it," he said. "It seems like one of the last
all-American things to do that hasn't been totally commercialized."

Of course, he knows stowing away on trains is dangerous and illegal.
But he also knows if he waits for the cars to stop and keeps a low
profile, chances are he'll be OK.

In four years and a dozen outings, he hasn't been arrested, or even
hassled. He finds most track workers just look the other way.

And except for a bruised hip from leaping off a train before it
stopped, he has come through unharmed.

Along the line, he's found ways to weave the dusty days in rail yards
into his college courses.

The mix of freedom and risk of the rails dovetailed nicely with the
philosophies of John Locke in a paper for a class called Civility and
Resistance. The rolling romance of train hopping was a natural subject
for a short film in a documentary class.

Likewise, the collegiate spirit seems to permeate his hoboing. He reads
John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, Ted Conover -- just about any author
who's written about hobos. On a more practical level, he studies the
rails' unwritten lore and traditions with a scholar's zeal.

He's learned a train is moving slow enough to jump if you can count the
bolts on the wheels as it rolls by. He's learned low-priority junkers
of mismatched empty cars always get sidelined for hotshot express
trains. He's learned the real key to hoboing is patience. Eventually,
the right train will come along.

Spadafora has spotted only one other hobo while riding the rails. The
man was waiting for a train in the yards in Pueblo when Spadafora
rolled by in the other direction.

"He saw me and he waved and yelled. I just think he was psyched to see
a young guy doing it," Spadafora said.

The number of people riding the rails hasn't changed, said Todd Waters,
the reigning hobo king, but there is a "turnover in the generations
right now."

Waters, 58, known on the rails as Ad Man, was selected for the yearlong
ceremonial role of hobo king by a hobo council that assembles in Britt,
Iowa, every summer. He said not many of the guys he started riding with
32 years ago are left.

"But there are all kinds of young'ns -- punks, activists, just kids
looking for adventure. And you know, that's nothing new, there were
always young adventurers attracted to the rails, all the way back to
the 1800s," he said when reached recently at his home in Minnesota
before catching out on a trip to Alabama.

"The ancients" like him, he said, get along with "the Flintstones," as
he calls young riders, because a "wanderer's grace, a kind of golden
thread winds through us all."

"We all camp together in the hobo jungles. But now we have two stew
pots, one regular and one vegetarian," he said.

Other things haven't changed.

The yard bulls, as railroad police are called, still will nab a hobo if
they see him, and now they have security cameras, motion sensors and
night vision goggles.

At the same time, trains rely increasingly on automation. A 100-car
freight these days may only have two people running it, making it
somewhat easier for a train hopper of any description to sneak aboard.

Railroad employees are supposed to report anyone they see riding, or
even approaching the trains, said Lena Kent, spokeswoman for the BNSF
Railway Co.

But author Ted Conover, who chronicled his college student
train-hopping ventures in his 1984 book "Rolling Nowhere," says workers
are overwhelmingly sympathetic.

"Most workers could see themselves in tramps. They'd look the other
way. But I think as there is less neediness associated with rail
riding, and more novices out there, the sympathy may dry up," he said.

There was no need for sympathy under the Cimarron bridge on that recent
Tuesday afternoon.

Spadafora and Dziura crouched in the dirt under the bridge for hours
and didn't see a soul.

They let three Denver-bound trains pass, waiting for a southbound.

Spadafora hopped on a boxcar at one point and rode for a few hundred
yards just to cut through the boredom.

A brakeman stopping to hook empty cars onto a northbound freight told
them to expect something southbound about 9 p.m.

They waited and waited, reading the faint hobo graffiti scrawled under
the bridge, watching the sun sink over a rusty line of boxcars.

At midnight, they decided they'd waited long enough and walked back
toward campus.

"People think hoboing is all romance, just watching the world go by
from an open boxcar. Actually, most of it is waiting for a train,"
Spadafora said.

He was not fazed by the lack of traffic the following Wednesday
morning. After all, along with being a hobo, he was also a graduate
with a lot to figure out, such as where he really wants to go in life
and, more immediately, what he's going to do with the stuff in the
house he has to vacate.

Besides, he said, "that's just train hopping. Sometimes it doesn't work
out. There will always be another train."

9 | adv00,1
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writes:
SPORTS ACTIVE: Long train running

Mark MacKenzie
1,555 words
10 July 2005 -- these stories are archived forever
Independent On Sunday
10
English
(c) 2005 Independent Newspapers (UK) Limited. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, distributed or exploited in any way.
[snip]
In years gone by, says Littlejohn, police would simply demand that
hoppers leave railroad premises. "After 9/11, the terrorist issue means
the level of security has been raised significantly, and this has
raised the level of difficulty of the sport. Not all that long ago,
railroad workers were kind of thrilled to see us; I"ve had some give me
their lunch. In 1997, I was riding a 75-car coal train through
Tennessee and the driver let me drive the train down an 11,000ft
mountain pass " it was so intense, a hobo"s fantasy."

Where did they find an 11,000 ft. pass in Tennessee?

It is presumed that Tenneesse Pass in Colorado was meant.
It tops at about 11,000 ft. Going down the west side of
the pass was very treacherous so it's very doubtful the
driver let the hobo really do much driving. [Probably
like the time a flight instructor let my six-year-old
son "fly" the airplane.]

Very interesting stories nevertheless.

wrote:
In years gone by, says Littlejohn, police would simply demand that
hoppers leave railroad premises. "After 9/11, the terrorist issue
means the level of security has been raised significantly, and this
has raised the level of difficulty of the sport. Not all that long
ago, railroad workers were kind of thrilled to see us; I"ve had some
give me their lunch. In 1997, I was riding a 75-car coal train through
Tennessee and the driver let me drive the train down an 11,000ft
mountain pass " it was so intense, a hobo"s fantasy."


You suppose he meant the Tennessee Pass? The tallest mountain in the Stae of
Tennessee is only about 6,600ft.

--
// Jeffrey Carlyle - - http://www.jeffc.org/

"you"ll never find a more exciting game of
adult hide and seek."

You endanger railroad employees when you "dynamite" a train. The conductor
is required to walk and inspect both sides of the train to make sure nothing
has derailed or shifted. Trains can be two miles long and walking conditions
can be extremely dangerous.

As a locomotive engineer I have maimed and killed your sort and I am
disturbed by your "game."

nobody here said it was 'his' game.
that said, freight train riding is a piece of Americana.

mr_class wrote:
"you"ll never find a more exciting game of
adult hide and seek."

You endanger railroad employees when you "dynamite" a train. The conductor
is required to walk and inspect both sides of the train to make sure nothing
has derailed or shifted. Trains can be two miles long and walking conditions
can be extremely dangerous.

As a locomotive engineer I have maimed and killed your sort and I am
disturbed by your "game."

If you ever had to clean up after someone who's just had his foot mashed off
"freight hopping" you wouldn't do it!
My company took a VERY dim view of it, and I don't blame them.



Jerry
wrote in message
oups.com...
SPORTS ACTIVE: Long train running

Mark MacKenzie
1,555 words
10 July 2005 -- these stories are archived forever
Independent On Sunday
10
English
(c) 2005 Independent Newspapers (UK) Limited. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, distributed or exploited in any way.

In the 1930s millions did it every day. Now it"s the last red- blooded
American adventure. Forget the road movie; today"s easy riders are
heading for the rails. Freight-hopping is back with a vengeance, says
Mark MacKenzie. It"s fast and free " just don"t get caught

In Depression-era America, illegal rail travel was more than just a
means of transport for the nation"s army of itinerant workers, or
hobos. Freight-hopping " jumping aboard a moving boxcar " was to thumb
your nose at authority, to proclaim your faith in the possibilities of
pastures new. For those in search of work or simply the next meal,
long-distance fare-dodging was a rite of passage.

The rise of the car saw the numbers of freight-hoppers decline sharply,
but now they"re back. Inspired by the writings of American road icons
such as Jack Kerouac and Woody Guthrie, "yuppie hobos" have taken this
uniquely American phenomenon and given it a new twist. Across the
continent, growing numbers of thrill-seekers are launching themselves
aboard moving freight trains and travelling thousands of miles in the
name of good old- fashioned adventure.

So what is exactly is responsible for this rolling-stock renaissance?
The evidence available in the various online chatrooms and weblogs
devoted to the activity suggests the modern freight-hopper is young,
educated and affluent. Which makes a 51-year-old criminal lawyer based
in Silver City, New Mexico an " almost " ideal spokesman for the new
freight generation. Duffy Littlejohn is the author of Hopping Freight
Trains in America " a "how-to" guide including everything from types of
trains to optimum boarding speeds " and a book widely acknowledged as
the freight-hoppers" bible. Littlejohn has been hitching rides for more
than 30 years, and attributes the rise of this unique counter-culture
to a reaction against increasingly curtailed civil liberties in modern
America.

"There"s a very large minority in the US that feels increasingly
disassociated from the mainstream, they"re disappointed in the
direction the country is moving in and would prefer not to do it like
Mom and Pop," Littlejohn says. "They"re looking for alternative ways of
living and being, and one of the ways of doing that is riding trains."

Littlejohn"s hobo alter ego was born in 1970, during a cycling trip
from San Francisco to Los Angeles. "One day in Watsonville [California]
a friend and I watched this long, slow freight train go by made up
almost entirely of open boxcars," he says. "We knew the train was going
north, but that was all.

"We jumped on and rode it to Oakland, where we immediately wound up in
jail, charged under California"s old juvenile apprehension law for
"leading an idle, dissolute, lewd and immoral life". Littlejohn"s
incarceration lasted less than 24 hours; his obsession with trains a
little longer.

After graduating from high school, he spent the next five years riding
trains all over the US. "I rode west of the Mississ-ippi mainly, but
also in the east and Alaska and Canada," he says. "Back then, a lot of
the guys were Vietnam veterans with mental-health or drug-abuse
problems."

During the Depression it is estimated that on any given day, as many as
four million Americans were travelling illegally on the railroads in
search of work. "The first hobos rode the rails when the American Civil
War ended [in 1865]," explains Littlejohn. "They resented the railroad
companies charging people a fortune, so they just climbed on."

When Littlejohn began freight-hopping, he did so alongside the remnants
of a dying breed. "The old-style hobos were fast disappearing when I
started," he says, "doing what they called "catching the westbound"".
Like their predecessors, modern freight-hoppers have adopted much of
the hobo slang that sprang up during life on the rails. "Dynamiting the
train" was to snap the airbrakes to bring the train to a temporary
halt. "Catching the westbound", on the other hand, was more terminal,
the final journey to that great switching-yard in the sky.

"Unlike in the Depression," says Littlejohn, "today"s freight-hoppers
see it as more of a sport; you"ll never find a more exciting game of
adult hide and seek."

In terms of how fit you need to be, Littlejohn aims to board trains
travelling around 6mph, "doable for most people. "If you"re climbing on
to a ladder carrying a backpack, 8 or 9mph is probably tops. That"s
when you need some agility. Being tall is an advantage, and you need to
be able to hold on. The crucial step up is what we call "nailing the
train".

Littlejohn advises would-be hoppers to choose their rolling stock
carefully. For beginners, he suggests the boxcar, often to be found
with both doors open. For a more "out there" ride, he advises a hopper
or grainer carriage. "These have rounded sides, and on the platform at
the back the air is still enough to light a match."

How yuppie hobos pass the time once aboard is a matter of personal
preference. Some take in the view, others thumb dog-eared classics of
road literature. Those in search of a more animated passage jump from
car to car, at night if they"re feeling really brave.

Between the wars, hobos developed a sophisticated series of signs to
advise fellow travellers of the amenities or dangers present in
railside neighbourhoods. From an alphabet of up to 500 pictograms,
symbols were scratched into trees or fence posts: nice lady; mean dog;
man with gun; doctor lives here.

The modern hobo, unsurprisingly, uses the rather more sophisticated
medium of the internet. "There"s a lot of information exchanged
online," explains Littlejohn. "Where to board, which routes are better
policed. The hoppers visiting chatrooms range in age from 15 to 30, and
a lot more women are getting involved."

In addition to the half a million or so miles Littlejohn believes he
has clocked up in the US, he has also travelled extensively in South
America and Europe. "In Europe it"s much easier," he says, "because not
many people do it. The trains are shorter and many are electric. It"s
much more densely populated, but the sensation is roughly the same."

In 1981, Littlejohn parked his hopping days in a siding for while to
attend law school, and today is at his most animated when defending the
legality of his beloved pastime. "In America [the railroads] are
private property, but one has to ask where that private property came
from," he says. "Most of it was public land granted to the railroads
after the Civil War, which mitigates the private property argument to
some extent.

"How would I rate the seriousness of the offence? In the larger scheme
of criminal activity, not that a big a deal. Judges and district
attorneys don"t get excited by this."

Charges levelled at Littlejohn thus far include "endangering the life
of railroad men in the operation of their equipment" and "obstructing
interstate transport".

"What harm am I doing the railroad?" he counters. "Maybe costing them
25 cents in diesel."

In years gone by, says Littlejohn, police would simply demand that
hoppers leave railroad premises. "After 9/11, the terrorist issue means
the level of security has been raised significantly, and this has
raised the level of difficulty of the sport. Not all that long ago,
railroad workers were kind of thrilled to see us; I"ve had some give me
their lunch. In 1997, I was riding a 75-car coal train through
Tennessee and the driver let me drive the train down an 11,000ft
mountain pass " it was so intense, a hobo"s fantasy."

While the internet has provided the modern hobo with a medium to
communicate, not all technology has been as welcome. "The cellphone is
a major problem," says Littlejohn. "Anybody can pop open their
cellphone and call the railroad company. The cellphone has made us real
sitting ducks. I"m not saying everybody calls us in " just the
bootlicking few. It"s just another element of our privacy being
erased."

"For the railroad companies, the freight-hopper is the red under the
bed," says Littlejohn, but increased security has only made him more
determined. "Freight-hopping," he says, "is the last red-blooded
American adventure; watching the great landscape roll by is part of our
heritage."

But scratch the surface of this romantic rhetoric, and you just might
catch a glimpse of a less glamorous truth. "I suppose what a number of
us are reluctant to admit is that freight-hoppers are essentially rail
fans," says Littlejohn. He is referring to that thin red line of
anoraks known in Britain as train spotters. Sadly, says Littlejohn, a
rift has recently developed between hobos and the more hardcore rail
fans. "They think we spoil the fun for everyone, getting them kicked
out of yards when they want to make videos or take photos. I think we
should just learn to get along; to love one another as much as we love
trains."

The wander years; Riding the rails during the Depression was a way of
life for many -- including Carmel's Theodore Sarbin

By LESLIE DUN]N
Herald correspondent
1,384 words
17 December 2004
Monterey County Herald
English
(c) Copyright 2004, Monterey County Herald. All Rights Reserved.

ASouthern Pacific freight train, its rusted boxcars clicking along the
tracks, has become a spectral archtype of the American landscape.

To Theodore Sarbin, to America in the 1930s, the train carried more
than grain and steel. It was a vehicle of hope and adventure.

Sarbin is a 93-year-old retired professor of psychology now living in
Carmel. At age 20, he wanted to see the world and left Cleveland to
ride the rails in 1931 at the onset of the Great Depression.

"I remember it was sometime in May. I took extra clothes, a frying pan
and some Bisquick. I started off hitchhiking going west."

"I got as far as Illinois and I ran into a fellow my age from New York
who said something about taking the freight trains. His name was Irv.
He was out to seek his fortune, too. We were good company for each
other."

Oh, sure there were stories about people losing their limbs hopping
freight trains. Sarbin says he never saw that, "but you learned that if
you grabbed the ladder wrong while the train was moving, it was easy to
slip and get your foot caught underneath."

You were careful.

A train had no bounds. From the top of a boxcar, the open prairies, the
blue skies above you -- this land was your land, this land was my land
-- the train could lead you anywhere.

Travelling west, sometimes with hundreds of men, they were also bearing
witness to a country "dying by inches" in the words of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.

"Some of these guys were farmers from the Dust Bowl, hoping to get out
to California where they thought there would be sunshine all the time
and you could pick grapefruits off the trees. It was hard to get into
California in 1931. They were cleaning out the railcars as they got
close to the border."

But if you were 20, you had your life ahead of you. You could watch the
sun rise over the Rocky Mountains. You helped each other.

"The train would stop in the morning and we'd get off and go into town.
We'd look for a YMCA and pay a nickel for a towel and a bar of soap.
We'd go up to a bakery. One of us would go in and ask the young woman
behind the counter 'is there any work I can do?' Sometimes they'd give
you work. Washing windows. They'd fill up a bag with bread and rolls.

"Then Irv would go in they'd say 'oh there's the basement that needs
cleaning.' We'd get more rolls."

Theodore "Ted" Sarbin was born in 1911 in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Polish
mother and a Russian father who made cigars for a living. He was one of
six children.

Sarbin says he probably read too many adventure books and was seized
with "wanderjahr" a German expression meaning "year to wander."

"It was a life without purpose," he says, "I have to admit that. You
didn't need much." Sometimes he sent his parents a two-cent postcard
from the road.

Sarbin and Irv rode the rails through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico,
Nevada. In a way, location was beside the point. He remembers the
plaintive sound of the train whistle.

"It meant moving on. I never felt sad or depressed out there. I always
thought if I went without a meal, so what? You can always get on a
freight train and go somewhere else. Maybe the girls in the next bakery
will be kinder."

Sometimes they'd walk onto a farm and work in exchange for something to
eat -- fatback bacon, cornbread, gravy. Usually it was a sandwich out
on the porch.

They'd sleep under newspapers in a park. If it rained, they discovered
you could go into a police station and they'd let you sleep in a jail
cell.

"There was no violence that I ever saw. If anything there was a spirit
of cooperation. One time In Cheyenne, Wy., Irv and I were waiting for a
train. An older hobo in his 40s asked the two if us if we'd had
anything to eat. We hadn't eaten in a couple of days. He left and came
back with coffee, lunchmeat, bread and so on. This fellow's name was
Harry. I never saw him again."

If you fell asleep on a grassy field you could never be sure what you'd
wake up to. Once it was to the sound of airplane engines. Another time
a cow stood over them chewing its cud.

You had to watch your shoes.

"I remember it was summertime in St Louis. I woke up in a park and
another hobo had his shoes stolen. So here was this fellow maybe 30
years old. Barefoot. Embarrassed to walk down the street. So I took it
upon myself to find the Salvation Army and a very understanding woman
gave me a pair of shoes. That was my turn to do a good deed for someone
else."

By autumn, Irv and Ted had crossed Wyoming into the Great Plains.
They'd seen a growing legion of footloose wanderers on the road. They
saw the ravages of poverty in rural areas.

Hobos would congregate in the jungles next to the railroad lines. "We'd
sit around the fire and talk and sometimes share food," Sarbin says.
"There was a song the old ones used to sing (about railroad baron James
J. Hill):

I know Jim Hill

And he's mighty fine

That's why I'm walkin down

Jim Hill's main line

Hallelujah I'm a bum."

At some point someone would ask, "are you a bum or a hobo? Bums won't
work. Hobos will. On the road you learned it was important distinction
and "sometimes," Sarbin says, "it was hard to tell the difference. If
he said he'd been there three months then you knew he was a bum."

On through Chicago, Pennsylvania, "there was much talk about the
government," Sarbin says. "People were ashamed to go on relief.
Everybody was effected by the Depression. And everyone asked why
couldn't the government do something about this?"

People were openly sympathetic to World War I vets who trekked across
country by the thousands to ask Hoover in Washington for their war
bonus. Droves of them were later dispersed in front of the capitol by
the tanks of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

"As a matter of fact," Sarbin says, "I happened to be wearing khaki
pants and shirt a lot of people thought I was one of the Bonus
marchers. Even though I was too young to be a veteran."

Eventually the train pulled into New York and "Irv and I split up. He
went home to Brooklyn and I found a room in a newsboy's dormitory and
spent two weeks walking around the bowery learning about New York."

A few weeks later Sarbin cross the border into Ohio and went home. It
was December. Christmastime. "I was glad to get out of the elements,"
Sarbin says, "except it was a little dull."

His father borrowed $20 from a friend to pay Sarbin's tuition at Ohio
State University -- an investment which in time justified his exile.
Sarbin's career as a psychologist centers around the meaning of the
stories we all acquire in our lives.

Sarbin taught psychology for two decades at the University of
California, Berkeley, then went on to teach at the University of
California at Santa Cruz where he is currently a professor emeritus of
psychology and criminology.

In 1999 he was the recipient of the Award for Distinguished Theoretical
and Philosophical Contribu
tions to Psychology by the American Psychological Association.

"In retrospect my life on the road may have been a foolish thing to do
but it helped me recognize the diversity of life, the capacity of
people to be kind and helpful to strangers."

"I was a member of a dispossessed segment of society. I think that's
always been in the background of my own story."
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& &




World;Nation; A

hobos chase trains to capture freedom

Amy Bowen
Staff
4,398 words
5 June 2005
St. Cloud Times
5A
English
(c) Copyright 2005, St Cloud Times. All Rights Reserved.

He lives the American Dream: a great job, a good home and a wife and
two kids. But every so often, he gives it all up, risking life and the
law, to hop a train to chase his other life - his hobo world.

Beware of tramps.

It was a familiar warning from Todd Waters' mother when he was growing
up in Keokuk, Iowa, a sleepy railroad town on the Mississippi River.

The uninvited visitors were thought to lurk around the river's bluffs.
The tramps, or boogeymen, rode the freight trains, sporting unwashed
hair, grimy clothes and what some thought was a sinister look.

As a boy, he spent his daytime hours defending imaginary jungles,
castles and forts in the woods around his town. But at night, he
worried the boogeyman would climb the porch to his bedroom and steal
him.

It finally happened: He met his boogeyman.

ORONO - This is a story of a man living a double life.

Todd Waters, 57, epitomizes the American Dream. A St. Cloud State
University graduate, he lives in a lake home in the posh suburb of
Orono.

He's a successful businessman who helps his wife run an award-winning
brand marketing firm. He declined to say how much he was worth but says
his family lives comfortably. They have two teen-agers and travel to
exotic locales such as Africa and Asia.

But several times a year, he becomes Adman, a modern-day hobo who
chases trains by day and sleeps under the stars at night. He leaves
home with $3, T-shirts, shorts, jeans, insect repellent, and a few odds
and ends to wander the United States and Canada.

Waters proudly embraces his life at home and on the road. He has two
tight-knit families and isn't afraid to have his worlds overlap.

He helps hobos communicate with police and government officials. He
helps mainstream society understand what he calls "the underworld."

Neither sees the beauty in each other, he said.

"I'm sad because (mainstream society) will miss out on greatness that
they'll never see," Waters said. "And I'm sad that the tramps and hobos
will miss out on the greatness of polite society."

History

Waters listened to the roar of the trains racing through Keokuk,
wondering where they took the boogeymen from the bluffs.

At 13, his horizons broadened when his family moved to Wayzata.

Craving adventure, he started hitchhiking as a sophomore in high
school.

"It was like the world was a big school building," Waters said.

Hitchhiking turned to rail-riding in 1972.

Police in Wyoming had arrested Waters for hitchhiking, but he talked
them into letting him catch a bus ride home.

Instead, he jumped an eastbound Union Pacific grain train. On top of a
train car, Waters watched the sun set in a flurry of colors. He watched
as the train whizzed through towns and chugged along desolate country
roads.

"I spent the whole night watching the prairie go by," he said. "I
thought, Christ, why didn't I do this before?"

On the road

A messy divorce in 1974 and his yearning for adventure forced Waters on
the road again. He sold his

St. Cloud business, Waters Advertising, and left his family and
friends.

He traveled alone, zig-zagging across the country and Canada for more
than two years.

"I didn't want to be around people," Waters said. "I was running away
and not running to."

The underworld quickly absorbed him. Like hobos from past generations,
he learned how to tell where a train was coming from and where it was
going. He knew which cars to sleep in - trains carrying woodchips from
the Northwest were a treat because they gave a warm and easy ride.

He slept under bridges. Dumpsters contained dinner feasts. Waters
learned what restaurants threw away the best food. He learned to pirate
electricity off pop machines. As he traveled, he washed dishes, windows
and just about everything else for food or money.

Slowly, a family of hobos adopted Waters. An elder hobo gave him a
street name, Adman. He quickly learned the unwritten rules of the road.


Hobos call each other by road names.

They never ask about each other's pasts.

And they look out for each other.

Water's new status came with some benefits. He stayed with other hobos
in "jungles"- heavily wooded areas near railroad division points. Here,
hobos share spirited discussions, sing at the top of their lungs and
listen to the haunting melodies of fiddles or harmonicas of the
musically gifted.

"It's a state of mind," he said. "You're with people who are considered
undesirable. They become your family. Their greatness is undeniable."

Family

Even hobos fall in love.

Waters fell for Dori Molitor of Rockville at President Jimmy Carter's
inauguration ball in 1977.

During a break from riding the rails, he'd met up with a friend from
his protesting days at St. Cloud State. State legislator Rick Nolan
asked Waters to manage his campaign for the

U.S. House of Representatives.

Waters and Molitor met while working on Nolan's successful campaign.

"I truly love him," Molitor said. "He is such a compassionate, caring,
honest person, who truly has a connection for all kinds of people."

They married 24 years ago and have two children, Alex, 17, and Andrew,
13, and two fat cats, Buddy Boy and Heidi.

Waters is a regular kind of father and husband. He feeds the cats, eats
dinner with his wife and loves to attend black-tie events.

Todd Waters' family accepts his passion to ride the rails. It's simply
part of him, Molitor said. His family allows him to escape for a
weekend or weeks at a time. He comes back refreshed, Molitor said.

"It refills his soul," Molitor said. "People do a lot of things. This
is Todd's."

Molitor sometimes is annoyed when he leaves. Juggling a family and a
business is hard work, she said. But she understands the need. "If he
didn't go, I don't think I'd like him," she said.

Molitor doesn't worry about her husband on the road. He's extremely
street smart, she said.

"I worry about my kids more than I worry about him," she said.

Merging

Molitor knows the drill all too well. "Will you accept a collect call?"
means a hobo friend wants to be picked up. And she answers without
hesitation.

Molitor knew about Todd Waters' dual lives before she married him. She
rode the rails once when they were first married. She loved the
therapeutic quality of listening to the rails at night. But she hated
catching the trains and fleeing train security. She hasn't gone since,
but she is quick to offer any of his hobo friends a place to stay and a
warm meal.

Their children have grown up with the hobo culture. They visit jungles
with their dad and listen for hours to the hobos' stories. A hobo even
baby-sat the children when their parents attended the theater.

"It's hard to be afraid with something I've grown up with," Andrew
Waters said. "He's careful. He knows the road. He's a professional
hobo."

Freedom makes the lifestyle appealing, Waters said. People yearn for
it, he said. Once while riding through a prairie town, he waved at a
woman hanging up wash. She dropped her basket, waved her arms and ran

after the train.

"My purpose in life is to make people homesick for their freedom," he
said. "This is my opportunity to do that."

Business

Although he might not seem like it, Waters has a mind for business.

In 1987, he and his wife founded Waters Molitor, a Minneapolis
marketing branding company that promotes products to women.

Waters Molitor is one of the top 100 marketing firms in the United
States, with clients such as Dunkin'

Donuts, Chex, Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and Malt-O-Meal cereals.

Waters left the firm eight years ago because he got tired of the
repetitive nature of everyday business.

Molitor runs the firm but often looks to her husband for creativity.
Last year, he teamed with his wife to consult on projects.

He now has a small office there and comes and goes

as he pleases.

Dangers

Riding the rails has a definite dark side. People have pulled knives on
him, and he's seen bodies in Dumpsters.

There will always be "bad apples," but the majority of hobos don't want
to cause problems, Waters said.

"The rule of the road is the law of decency," he said. "Do unto others
as you'd like to have done to you."

Now that he's in his 50s, Waters considers traveling with other hobos
for safety.

"I'm vulnerable out there right now," he said. "Half of it is bluffing
when you're white-haired and fat."

The bigger problem is that trains aren't safe. Just ask Preacher Steve,
a friend who lost his toes after a freight train ran over them.

Waters suffered from the stomach flu once while traveling. He spent
three days vomiting under a cattle loading ramp in Montana until he
felt better. "It's a hard life," he said. "You don't eat well. You
don't get medical attention."

Jumping a train has become more difficult since Sept. 11. Cameras and
guards constantly watch the rail yards for trespassers.

"You hide," Waters said, when he spots a guard. "You're sitting in the
weeds saying, 'busted, busted, busted.'"

Sometimes he gets busted. He has a long list of misdemeanors on his
record and has spent many nights in jails.

Hobo king

Britt, Iowa, might not seem like a hotbed for hobo activity, but every
August, the town of about 2,000 hosts the National Hobo Convention.

The town, about 130 miles north of Des Moines, became home to the
traditional celebration 105 years ago. The hobos created their own
organization, Tourist Union #63, in the late 1800s to ride the rails
for free.

Now, 10,000 to 20,000 hobos, tramps, families and the curious come for
the six-day event, Britt Mayor Jim Nelson said. Festivities include
bake sales - with goods made by the hobos - craft and rummage sales, a
poetry reading, and the hobo king and queen cornation.

The town also has a hobo cemetery, a hobo-themed restaurant and the
Hobo Foundation, which protects the culture and history of hobos. The
newest addition will be a hobo museum, which will be organized by
hobos, including Waters.

Waters received the highest honor from fellow hobos last year: Crowd
applause determined he would be hobo king for a one-year term.

He takes his position seriously, using it to raise awareness about hobo
culture.

"He's kind of a free spirit kind of guy, who has part of a business in
Minneapolis, who likes to ride the trains every once in a while,"
Nelson said.

Another mission Waters feels passionate about is identifying the
Unknown Hobo, a man found frozen to death in December 2003 in a
Minneapolis boxcar. He hangs fliers in jungles, gives them to hobos he
sees and works with law enforcement to keep the case open.

The unknown hobo is buried in a north Minneapolis cemetery with a
marker made by Waters and his son. He said he hopes to one day bury the
hobo in Britt with a name.

Æ

And it was in Britt a few years ago that Waters finally confronted a
hobo who caused him to lock his bedroom windows in Keokuk.

One night he was chatting in a bar with an older hobo, Side Door
Pullman Kid.

Side Door Pullman Kid told about his adventures of setting up a jungle
in a tiny Iowa town on the Mississippi River bluffs.

Waters finally faced his boogeyman.

"The hair went up on my arms. I said, 'My God, man, you're my
boogeyman.'"

If you're caught, hobo lifestyle comes at a price

By Amy Bowen



Trespass on the rails, and you could pay the price.

It's a warning that railroad officials want to get across to folks
intrigued by the idea of riding the trains or even walking along the
tracks.

Most trespassers are on foot, and it's estimated the railroad catches
as many as 20,000 a year, said Steve Forsberg, general director of
public affairs for the BNSF Railway based in Kansas City, Kan.

"Freight trains are not meant to carry people," Forsberg said. "It's
very dangerous."

Catching people jumping trains or riding on trains is rare, he said.

"I don't know if it's the forbidden fruit aspect or the thrill of doing
something illegal," said Jim Kvedaras, senior manager of U.S. public
and governmental affairs for Canadian National Railway.

Specific trespassing numbers were not available from BNSF Railway or
Canadian National Railway.

Trespassing laws vary from state to state. Locally, St. Cloud city
attorney Jan Petersen said he hasn't prosecuted any cases of railroad
trespassing.

The arrests are handled by railroad, state or local police departments,
said Warren Flatau, public affairs specialist for the Federal Railroad
Administration in Washington.

Despite the warnings, trespassing remains a major issue for the Federal
Railroad Administration.

About 500 people die every year because they trespass on railroad
property, Flatau said. In 2004, Minnesota had seven deaths and nine
injuries. Stearns County had one death in 2004, he said.

the law

Minnesota law says anyone caught trespassing on railroad tracks can be
charged with a misdemeanor.

Anyone caught trespassing at a rail yard can be charged with a gross
misdemeanor, which has a maximum penality of one year in jail and
$3,000 in fines, according to St. Cloud city attorney Jan Petersen.

Rails draw diverse group

By Amy Bowen



minneapolis jewel

The rumble of trains flying past her tiny Minneapolis home stir mixed
feelings in Julianna Porrazzo-Ray.

The sounds lulled her to sleep as a child. Now, the sounds bring an
urge: Where are they going? Who's on board? What's the train carrying?

Better known as Minneapolis Jewel on the rails, she's resisted the urge
to hop a freight train for almost four years.

"But never say never when talking to a hobo," Minneapolis Jewel said.
"You never know. It's in their blood."

Minneapolis Jewel rode her first train in 1979 after reading about
hobos in a magazine.

Her destination? The annual Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa.

For years, she was a fixture in a male-dominated world. Two lessons
helped her survive: Lay low and voice opinions discreetly. Slowly, she
gained the respect of hobos and became a repeat queen of the hobos.

She even met her husband on the road. Darrel Ray, whose road name is
Tuck, is 12 years her junior but always had a fondness for the silent,
powerful woman.

Tuck grew up on the road. He left his home in Texas at 15. He didn't
have a Social Security card, a birth certificate or any family outside
of the hobos.

Minneapolis Jewel gave her husband of four years a home and a family.

Minneapolis Jewel and Tuck still travel to Britt every summer and still
have a long list of hobo friends. Minneapolis Jewel remains the
caregiver of the hobo family, treating them when they're ill, helping
them find employment and giving them a place to rest.

Life on the rails has changed, she said. "Unsavory characters," drugs
and alcohol have taken over the population. Minneapolis Jewel worries a
piece of history will be lost.

"There are young kids riding, but if they stop riding, who's going to
be left?" she asked.

uncle freddie

Uncle Freddie is known as a bridger on the rails.

At 74, Freddie Liberatore has ridden steam and modern trains - an honor
not many can claim.

Uncle Freddie didn't ride full time for most of his life. He owned a
painting company in Los Angeles when he met his wife of 10 years,
Bette.

Uncle Freddie and a group of friends flew into the Twin Cities and
hopped a train to Brainerd. At a local bar, he met the feisty Bette.
She was not impressed.

"They looked pretty scrunchy when they came in here," said Bette
Liberatore, who lives in Maple Grove with her husband.

Uncle Freddie retired from the hobo life. One of his friends rode the
rails well into his 80s, said Bette Liberatore, 59.

"I don't see anything attractive about it," Bette Liberatore said. "It
must be a guy thing."

preacher steve

Hitchhiking led Steve Stewart, or Preacher Steve, to the rail yards.

He spent 27 years on the road traveling job to job before retiring in
1998. Preacher Steve still rides every once in a while, but now he's
married to his wife, Lea, or Half Track, and has children. Preacher
Steve of Annandale recently graduated from technical college and wants
to be a licensed practical nurse.

The hobo lifestyle is hard, he said. He braved temperatures of 50
degrees below zero and lost toes when he was run over by a freight
train. The road wears on your body, he said.

"Twenty-five or 26 years on the night shift was a lot," he said. "I
figured that was enough, and I'd get a day job."

can you help identify the Unknown hobo?

Todd Waters, also known as Adman, wants to find the name of an
unidentified man found in a Canadian Pacific Railroad train car in
Minneapolis. The man, thought to be in his early 40s, was found frozen
to death Dec. 16, 2003. The train left Chicago, with stops in
Wisconsin, before reaching Minnesota.

For details, visit http://homepage.mac.com/admanwaters .

Who's who on the road

According to Waters:

| Hobos: Work and ride trains to travel to different jobs. Hobos are
independent and don't participate in welfare or other government
programs. Many are driven by social issues.

| Youngins: Younger hobos.

| Ancients: Older hobos.

| Working: Hobos who work and travel. They do day-labor jobs, such as
farm work or construction.

| Cause-related: Hobos who travel to protests or squats. Many stay in
abandoned buildings until police raid them. They travel from city to
city.

| Tramps: Don't work, are usually on government assistance or beg for
food. They ride from town to town. They drink more than the hobos.

| Bums: Don't ride or work. Drink a lot.

| Gypsies: More common in Europe. Usually generations of families who
travel together. Don't ride the rails.

separate fact from myths

Myths about hobos, with explanations by Waters.

Myth: All hobos cause problems.

Truth: While there are some troublemakers, the majority are
peace-loving men and women.

Myth: Hobos are men with nothing better to do.

Truth: Men, women and children relied on railroads to take them to
farming jobs at harvest time during the Great Depression. People still
ride the rails because of the sense of freedom, the need for work and
the adventure. They do not rely on government assistance.

Myth: Rail riding is illegal.

Truth: This is true. Railroads have strict rules and penalties if you
are caught. But hobos say the benefits outweigh the risks.

"It's free transportation," said Jon Angus MacLeod, aka Texasmadman.
"It's the last red-blooded American adventure."

Myth: Hobos are uneducated.

Truth: Some are, some aren't. You can find college students,
professors, entrepreneurs and even retired police officers.

Myth: Hobos don't have families.

Truth: Some have husbands, wives and children. Some marry each other.

Log on for more

|^ http://homepage.mac.com/admanwaters - Site maintained by the Adman.

|^ www.hobo.com - Run by the Hobo Foundation in Britt, Iowa. Offers
information on donations, hobos in the Hobo Cemetery, alerts, best
train routes and subscription to the Hobo News.

|^ www.brittchamberofcommerce.com/Hobo/index.html - The Britt Chamber
of Commerce's Hobo Convention Web site.

|^ http://www.epcc.edu/ftp/Homes/monica...n_language.htm
- A term paper about hobo sign language.

|^ www.worldpath.net/~minstrel - News for hobos.

|^ http://hobotramp .

0catch.com/index.html - Run by Santa Fe Jack with hobo links, photos
and an online newspaper

|^ www.myhappyhobodays.homestead.com/Story.html - Stories from
California Kid.

More online ...

At www.sctimes.com/hobo :

|^Send questions to Todd Waters, a hobo from Orono. Answers will be
posted online.

|^Links to audio of Waters telling his hobo stories.

|^Additional photos of hobo jungles in the Twin Cities.

|^Links related to hobo history and current happenings.

|^Help identify the Unknown Hobo.

|^Waters' photo gallery of his hobo friends.

|^The tale of Texasmadman, a gifted storyteller.

20 things to take on a trip

When Todd Waters hits the rail yards as Adman, he takes a bag
containing:

Body bag: Used for sleeping, keeping out wind and dew. Available at
Army surplus stores.

Ground cloth: To protect the body bag.

Cloth carrying bag: Easier to carry than metal-framed backpacks used by
younger hobos.

Light clothing: Layers are essential. Jacket, jeans, socks, T-shirts.

Walking boots: Comfort is a must.

Metal spoon: For eating. At hobo jungles, if you don't have a spoon,
you buy the beer.

Plastic spoon: Fuel to light a fire.

Water spigot handle: To tap into buildings with outside water access.

P-38 can opener: To open cans of food.

Needle: For sewing and mending.

Dental floss: For mending or stitching wounds because it's stronger
than thread.

Super glue: For "self-repair."

Leatherman: A tool that includes knives, pliers, can openers, bottle
openers, etc.

Rope: To tie hammocks to rail cars; to help with protection from rain.

Hammock: For sleep during trips on the trains and in jungles.

Carabiners: Holds ropes and hammocks.

Flea collars: Worn around ankles to protect against chiggers and fleas.


Bug repellent: To keep away mosquitoes, flies, other insects.

Dryer sheets: Worn under hats to ward off gnats.

Digital camera, computer: Not normally carried by hobos, but he takes
photos on the road.

Friends, faces dot travels while on the road

Todd Waters, also known as Adman, documents his hobo friends while on
the road. Here are some of them, their personalities captured in
Adman's own words. He also included portraits of himself by an unknown
photographer.

dante

Dante lives his life like he talks, in compressed declarative busts of
truncated insights. Yet he's not the hyper type. His movements are slow
and intentional - like a spider's walk - his long arm patterned in
Irish freckles, extends before him, making a broad sweep as he makes
his point - a wisp of cigarette smoke trailing his long fingers through
the air.

new york slim and his baby

"He (God) doesn't care what we accumulate, he doesn't care how far we
come, he doesn't care what we have at the end of it all. I think what
he cares about when we get there is what did you do. Did you love
somebody that was a goofball. Did you love somebody that was an Angel.
Do you love some body. I think that's what it's about and I don't want
to miss that." - New York Slim and his dog, Baby.

April is as independent and unstoppable as she is beautiful. And losing
her leg under a freight car 10 years ago hasn't slowed her down one
bit. I see a lot more women on the road today, nearly as many women as
men along the West Coast. I've often asked them why they dared take
their first ride. Most tell me they never knew they couldn't. Our
"sisters of the road" are a new breed of hoboes. They're not women's
rights activists. They were born with rights, they expect them, they
take them, they are them and they ride like the wind to wherever they
please. The last time I saw April was late last summer in a little
jungle down in Wisconsin. I think she was headed south. All I could see
was her early morning silhouette walking down a little path toward the
rail yard. She was carrying her framed backpack and everything she
owned on her back. I noticed her dog was wearing the little saddlebags
April had made her to carry her own food and water dish.

It seems April's self-reliance has rubbed off on her dog.

klikity klak

"You really don't need money in America. There's no country that wastes
as much as America. If you're someone like me who's riding trains for
free, you're eatin' for free and I don't have any addiction that costs
me any money - my only addiction is food and fiddle and I've got that
covered all ready - I really don't need money." - Klikity Klak

Times photos by Jason Wachter,

Todd Waters leads a double life: He is part successful business man,
part hobo riding trains and living on streets throughout the United
States and Canada.

Waters and his wife, Dori Molitor, look at photographs he has taken of
the

hobos he's met while riding the rails as Adman.

Times photos by Jason Wachter,

Todd Waters walks along the railroad tracks in St. Paul, a comfortable
place for him. He spent many years on the road living and riding rail
cars. Waters has since settled down with his wife and two children in
Orono. But he still is called back to the hobo life a couple of times a
year.

Waters walks into the building that houses the award-winning
advertising business Waters Molitor.

Waters shows his son, Andrew, 13, the jacket he has had signed by his
hobo friends.

Waters can tell which trains are going where and what they are hauling
in this rail yard in Fridley.

Waters says there are differences between rail riders.

Waters is on a quest to find the identity of this man. To help, he is
hanging fliers in jungles throughout the country.

The grave of the Unknown Hobo is in a north Minneapolis cemetery.

Document XSCT000020050609e1650000i

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Retrieving article(s)...

Article 1


Riding the Rail ; Hobos often mistakenly thought of as lazy, uneducated


Bob Holliday
1,053 words
29 April 2005
The Pantagraph
D1
English
Copyright (c) 2005 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All
rights reserved.

"Ingenious tramps and hobos rode everywhere. They learned to ride a
train "the way an Indian brave could ride his horse: They could hang
onto belly, back, neck or rump, and get there."

"The whistling of a locomotive on a still night had a lure,
unexplainable, yet strong, like the light which leads a moth to
destruction."

- Clark C. Spence, writing in The Western Historical Quarterly

-----------

BLOOMINGTON - Don't call hobos lazy around Dawn DiVenti, who will tell
you a true hobo traveled in constant search of work.

Don't call them uneducated, either. DiVenti will inform you hobos often
had carpentry and masonry skills and were well read.

Finally, don't call them dirty. "Hobo jungles," as hobo encampments
near railroads were called, were most often near water so hobos could
keep clean.

The Rockford librarian, who will speak about hobos Thursday at the
Bloomington Public Library, enjoys studying hobos and dispelling myths
about them.

"They are the neatest group of people I've met in my life," said the
self-professed "hobo at heart."

DiVenti, 37, was crowned at the 2004 annual hobo convention in Britt,
Iowa as "The Queen of the Hobos."

Though DiVenti said today's hobos share a sense of brotherhood with
early hobos who rode the rails, many travel to hobo functions such as
the annual convention by car and tote cell phones.

DiVenti, known in hobo circles as "Sunrise," has taken her educational
campaign as far as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Her free Bloomington talk will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the library's
community room.

Besides correcting misconceptions about hobos, who numbered more than 1
million in Depression-era America, she will sing hobo and railroad
songs.

Hobos were commonplace in America from the 1870s until 1950, said
DiVenti, who teaches a course about hobos at a junior college in
Rockford.

She estimates there are fewer than 1,000 hobos today.

The few who continue to ride the rails are mostly younger, she said,
adding that hopping fast-moving modern-day trains powered by diesel
locomotives isn't easy. Older steam-powered locomotives, by contrast,
stopped frequently for water.

Bloomington railroad buff Mike Matejka said few box cars are open
anymore anyway, but hobos hopped trains in Bloomington until about
1950.

"We had direct lines to St. Louis, Chicago and Indianapolis. This was a
good crossroads point," he said, adding "hopping the freight was a
quick and easy way to the next job" even though it was and remains
illegal and dangerous.

The increasing mechanization of agriculture, however, meant less demand
for the seasonal workers many hobos were, Matejka said.

Paved roads and cheap cars meant migratory workers turned instead to
highways. These hobos were affectionately known as "rubber tramps,"
DiVenti said.

Whether they traveled by rail or highway, hobos "were a very necessary
part of the labor force," said Mark Wyman, a retired professor of
history at Illinois State University. Wyman is working on a book about
hobos and itinerant workers in the American West.

Wyman said that as America grew, there were "tremendous labor needs for
short periods."

Hobos filled this need, which included harvesting sugar beets in
Colorado and Utah; apples in Washington state and Oregon, and cotton in
Texas and Arizona, he said.

Migrant workers, who Wyman called the modern-day hobos, travel by car,
not rail, he said.

While the rail-rider is mostly a relic, part of the exhibit Journey
Through the Great Depression at the McLean County Museum of History in
Bloomington reminds visitors of that past.

Museum Curator Susan Hartzold said hobos were "a part of the culture
and those who lived through the Great Depression recalled them (hobos)
vividly."

Carl "Bud" Ekstam, an 84-year-old Bloomington resident, has fond
memories of hobos, who he and boyhood friends visited at a hobo
encampment near his childhood home on the west side of Bloomington.

The hobo way of life began to die out as the economy improved and
people no longer needed to travel to find work, he said. Ekstam recalls
many being blacksmiths, carpenters and brick masons.

"They were looking for work," Ekstam said. "Mostly we just sat around
and listened to their stories."

----------- Who are they?

- A hobo is a person who travels in search of work. This is in contrast
to a tramp, who travels but won't work, and a bum who neither travels
nor works.

- The name hobo first started appearing in the early 1800s.

- During the Great Depression, when there were more than 1 million
hobos, over 8,000 were women and more than 200,000 were children.

- Many hobos had a specific skill, such as music, gardening and
repairing shoes.

- The center of hobo life was the hobo jungle, a congregating area
usually located near railroad tracks and water.

- Hobos had monikers like Hobo Joe and Cinder Box Cindy.

- Although hobos had no specific style of dress, ball caps were common,
as were long sleeves and denim pants.

- Many hobos carried a backpack, called a bindle, for extra clothes,
food, eating utensils and tools.

- A common adversary of hobos was the railroad police, often nicknamed
"the bull."

SOURCES: Various Web sites about hobos, including: http://
members.tripod.com/HoboJeepers/hobo.htm

--------It's illegal

While author Jack London and others may have romanticized hobos and
train hopping, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern Corp. said train
hoppers aren't adventurers.

"We call them trespassers. Hopping trains is illegal and we do all we
can to discourage it," said Robin Chapman.

The struggle by railroads and police to stop train hopping continues
today, Chapman said, adding that nowadays the train hoppers are mostly
thrill seekers.

"People are doing it for adventure," Chapman said, noting it's
dangerous as well as illegal.

Hobo camps like this 1930s camp on Bloomington's west side were usually
near railroad tracks. Hobos were commonplace in America from the 1870s
until about 1950. Dawn DiVenti, of Rockford, will speak about hobos at
the Bloomington Public Library on Thursday. Dawn DiVenti, of Rockford,
who was crowned "The Queen of the Hobos" at the 2004 annual hobo
convention in Britt, Iowa, will speak about hobos at the Bloomington
Public Library on Thursday.


******************************************



Colorado College grad plans to ride the rails this summer

By DAVE PHILIPPS
The Gazette
1,338 words
2 June 2005
00:00
Associated Press Newswires
English
(c) 2005. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) - Joe "Giuseppe" Spadafora graduated from
Colorado College on May 23 with a degree in political science. The next
day, he walked down to the railroad tracks under the Cimarron Street
bridge to hop a train.

Hotshot, junker, boxcar, piggyback -- it didn't really matter what type
of train. He had a few twenties hidden in his shoe, a backpack stuffed
with a blanket, a poncho, a little jerky and dried fruit, and was ready
to catch out on his first trip in a summer of hoboing.

Spadafora, 21, whose thin face and dark sideburns make him look like a
young Bob Dylan, has been riding the rails since his freshman year --
alone and with friends, on short hops and overnights. He's also
hitchhiked thousands of miles.

This summer he plans to head to Los Angeles to try his hand at the
movie industry, but first he wanted to hop a few more trains, starting
with a quick overnight to Pueblo with friend and fellow CC alumnus Jim
Dziura, who was riding the rails for the first time.

Colorado College isn't known for cranking out conformists. The school
gives students grants to study everything from weaving in Guatemala to
climbing Denali. Still, a freewheeling hobo probably isn't what people
would expect of one of Colorado's most exclusive, and expensive,
colleges.

"Most of my friends have internships or jobs already for the summer.
Definitely none are going train hopping," Spadafora said as he crouched
on his heels in the broken glass near the tracks.

His mother, Beth Spadafora, seemed to wish he had an internship or a
job, too, as she got ready to leave after graduation. She's uneasy
about train hopping. "It's just so dangerous," she said.

It's also illegal. Simply entering a railroad's right-of-way in
Colorado can mean a $50 to $750 fine and/or time in jail.

Still, there is something about those trains, how they hiss and clack
and shake the ground, how the steel feels cool and exhilarating when
you grab the ladder and swing up, how the solid grit of riding through
the night stands out from all the mushy flip-flop philosophizing of
undergrad life.

Lines of freight cars have captivated Spadafora since he was a kid. He
used to count the cars as they went by, and once he discovered they
could carry a guy to see all sorts of places and things, he was hooked.


"It's probably cliche to say this, but there's a real sense of freedom,
adventure, I just love it," he said. "It seems like one of the last
all-American things to do that hasn't been totally commercialized."

Of course, he knows stowing away on trains is dangerous and illegal.
But he also knows if he waits for the cars to stop and keeps a low
profile, chances are he'll be OK.

In four years and a dozen outings, he hasn't been arrested, or even
hassled. He finds most track workers just look the other way.

And except for a bruised hip from leaping off a train before it
stopped, he has come through unharmed.

Along the line, he's found ways to weave the dusty days in rail yards
into his college courses.

The mix of freedom and risk of the rails dovetailed nicely with the
philosophies of John Locke in a paper for a class called Civility and
Resistance. The rolling romance of train hopping was a natural subject
for a short film in a documentary class.

Likewise, the collegiate spirit seems to permeate his hoboing. He reads
John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, Ted Conover -- just about any author
who's written about hobos. On a more practical level, he studies the
rails' unwritten lore and traditions with a scholar's zeal.

He's learned a train is moving slow enough to jump if you can count the
bolts on the wheels as it rolls by. He's learned low-priority junkers
of mismatched empty cars always get sidelined for hotshot express
trains. He's learned the real key to hoboing is patience. Eventually,
the right train will come along.

Spadafora has spotted only one other hobo while riding the rails. The
man was waiting for a train in the yards in Pueblo when Spadafora
rolled by in the other direction.

"He saw me and he waved and yelled. I just think he was psyched to see
a young guy doing it," Spadafora said.

The number of people riding the rails hasn't changed, said Todd Waters,
the reigning hobo king, but there is a "turnover in the generations
right now."

Waters, 58, known on the rails as Ad Man, was selected for the yearlong
ceremonial role of hobo king by a hobo council that assembles in Britt,
Iowa, every summer. He said not many of the guys he started riding with
32 years ago are left.

"But there are all kinds of young'ns -- punks, activists, just kids
looking for adventure. And you know, that's nothing new, there were
always young adventurers attracted to the rails, all the way back to
the 1800s," he said when reached recently at his home in Minnesota
before catching out on a trip to Alabama.

"The ancients" like him, he said, get along with "the Flintstones," as
he calls young riders, because a "wanderer's grace, a kind of golden
thread winds through us all."

"We all camp together in the hobo jungles. But now we have two stew
pots, one regular and one vegetarian," he said.

Other things haven't changed.

The yard bulls, as railroad police are called, still will nab a hobo if
they see him, and now they have security cameras, motion sensors and
night vision goggles.

At the same time, trains rely increasingly on automation. A 100-car
freight these days may only have two people running it, making it
somewhat easier for a train hopper of any description to sneak aboard.

Railroad employees are supposed to report anyone they see riding, or
even approaching the trains, said Lena Kent, spokeswoman for the BNSF
Railway Co.

But author Ted Conover, who chronicled his college student
train-hopping ventures in his 1984 book "Rolling Nowhere," says workers
are overwhelmingly sympathetic.

"Most workers could see themselves in tramps. They'd look the other
way. But I think as there is less neediness associated with rail
riding, and more novices out there, the sympathy may dry up," he said.

There was no need for sympathy under the Cimarron bridge on that recent
Tuesday afternoon.

Spadafora and Dziura crouched in the dirt under the bridge for hours
and didn't see a soul.

They let three Denver-bound trains pass, waiting for a southbound.

Spadafora hopped on a boxcar at one point and rode for a few hundred
yards just to cut through the boredom.

A brakeman stopping to hook empty cars onto a northbound freight told
them to expect something southbound about 9 p.m.

They waited and waited, reading the faint hobo graffiti scrawled under
the bridge, watching the sun sink over a rusty line of boxcars.

At midnight, they decided they'd waited long enough and walked back
toward campus.

"People think hoboing is all romance, just watching the world go by
from an open boxcar. Actually, most of it is waiting for a train,"
Spadafora said.

He was not fazed by the lack of traffic the following Wednesday
morning. After all, along with being a hobo, he was also a graduate
with a lot to figure out, such as where he really wants to go in life
and, more immediately, what he's going to do with the stuff in the
house he has to vacate.

Besides, he said, "that's just train hopping. Sometimes it doesn't work
out. There will always be another train."

9 | adv00,1
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"Everett M. Greene" wrote in message
...
writes:
SPORTS ACTIVE: Long train running

Mark MacKenzie
1,555 words
10 July 2005 -- these stories are archived forever
Independent On Sunday
10
English
(c) 2005 Independent Newspapers (UK) Limited. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, distributed or exploited in any way.
[snip]
In years gone by, says Littlejohn, police would simply demand that
hoppers leave railroad premises. "After 9/11, the terrorist issue means
the level of security has been raised significantly, and this has
raised the level of difficulty of the sport. Not all that long ago,
railroad workers were kind of thrilled to see us; I"ve had some give me
their lunch. In 1997, I was riding a 75-car coal train through
Tennessee and the driver let me drive the train down an 11,000ft
mountain pass " it was so intense, a hobo"s fantasy."

Where did they find an 11,000 ft. pass in Tennessee?

It is presumed that Tenneesse Pass in Colorado was meant.
It tops at about 11,000 ft. Going down the west side of
the pass was very treacherous so it's very doubtful the
driver let the hobo really do much driving. [Probably
like the time a flight instructor let my six-year-old
son "fly" the airplane.]

Very interesting stories nevertheless.




Thrilled to see you? HA! Even 5 years ago, we were told to report ANY
tresspassers on the right-of-way and hobos as well. Even if you were walking
the tracks as a "highway". NS even ran off known "foamers" (railfans)!

Jerry

"mr_class" wrote in message
...
"you"ll never find a more exciting game of
adult hide and seek."

You endanger railroad employees when you "dynamite" a train. The conductor
is required to walk and inspect both sides of the train to make sure
nothing
has derailed or shifted. Trains can be two miles long and walking
conditions
can be extremely dangerous.

As a locomotive engineer I have maimed and killed your sort and I am
disturbed by your "game."

Donn't let it bother you so much in the case of cretins like that - take
pride in the fact that you are doing God's (and Darwin's) work by culling
the gene pool... :O|

"Jeffrey Carlyle" wrote in message
...
wrote:
In years gone by, says Littlejohn, police would simply demand that
hoppers leave railroad premises. "After 9/11, the terrorist issue
means the level of security has been raised significantly, and this
has raised the level of difficulty of the sport. Not all that long
ago, railroad workers were kind of thrilled to see us; I"ve had some
give me their lunch. In 1997, I was riding a 75-car coal train through
Tennessee and the driver let me drive the train down an 11,000ft
mountain pass " it was so intense, a hobo"s fantasy."


You suppose he meant the Tennessee Pass? The tallest mountain in the Stae
of Tennessee is only about 6,600ft.

--
// Jeffrey Carlyle - - http://www.jeffc.org/



I always wondered how you "drive" a train.

J

"mr_class" wrote in message
...
"you"ll never find a more exciting game of
adult hide and seek."

You endanger railroad employees when you "dynamite" a train. The conductor
is required to walk and inspect both sides of the train to make sure
nothing has derailed or shifted. Trains can be two miles long and walking
conditions can be extremely dangerous.

As a locomotive engineer I have maimed and killed your sort and I am
disturbed by your "game."

(sigh) They just don't understand that railroading is NOT a "game". To them
its this giant choo choo set around some huge Christmas tree. As a retired
employee and station agent, I would take dim view of people fooling around
on RR property and if I caught you catching up on equipment, I would alert
the railroad detectives in a skinny minute and get the train stopped so they
could get you off.. You are looking to get killed! Trust me!!
I doubt very seriously the companies (I know mine didn't) would welcome your
presence, nor would they be amused if an employee "let" you "drive" (yeah,
right) a train; he is risking his job if he does that. Sounds to me like
someone is dreaming a little railfan's dream!

J