Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In my mind, freight trains have always held some kind of special mojo. As a kid, I’d read about them, and sung about them. I loved the story, “The Boxcar Children”. I’d seen freight trains, and I’d always wanted to ride them, but at the exalted age of twenty-two years, I never had hopped on board a freight train. However, my best friend Mel had. Around 1970, during one of my many early retirements I’d gone to New Mexico with Mel and his delightful wife Andrea. They were going to stay, so I decided to ride the freights back to California from New Mexico. Mel told me what to do, what to watch out for, and took me to the local division, in a town called Belén (Spanish for Bethlehem) near Albuquerque. I learned from him that a railroad consists of stations and divisions. At a division, as you might imagine, the track divides and goes on from there in two (or more) directions. At the stations in between divisions there’s only one line, and the train may stop or not, depending on if it has freight for that town. So you could wait a long time at a station for a train to stop.
Figure 1. Riding the rods. Only for very desperate men, there are lots of more comfortable seats on a freight train.
But at a division, the incoming train cars are split apart and re-assembled into new strings, depending on where they’re headed. So if you can figure out which string of cars is going where you’re headed, you just need to jump on board. Then after while, they hook up the engine, and you’re on your way. Mel told me the kinds of cars that were best to ride on. He recommended riding between the wheels of the trailers on “piggyback” rigs, the setup where a truck trailer is mounted on a railroad car. He said that usually you could ask the brakeman which way the various lines of cars were going. He said to watch out for loose freight of any kind, it could shift and crush you. He told me about the “bulls”, the railroad guards, and how to tell them from the brakemen.
We rode to Belén and I got out at the division in the late evening. Mel and I talked and laughed, discussed the layout of a typical train yard, and all too soon we shook hands and hugged, and he walked to his truck, came back with my canteen I’d forgotten behind the seat, and then he was on his way. The sun was setting. A full moon was rising. It was still early spring, snow on the hills reflected the moonlight. The night was clear. I watched the lights of Mel’s truck disappear, he waved out the window. I shouldered my backpack, turned around, and walked into the freight yard in the growing darkness.
As usual, Mel had given me the straight story. I saw a man in the yard. He was clearly working, not pretending to work or just looking around, so by Mel’s guide he was a brakeman. I went up to him. He said that they were making up a train on a certain track, call it track number 8, heading west. He directed me to the main line. I walked along the main line to track number 8, the short section of track leading off the main line where they were making up the westbound train. But there, I couldn’t find anything that looked good. No piggyback rigs. No empty boxcars. The best bet seemed like a “flat with ends”, a flatcar with no sides but with a seven-foot (two metre) tall wall at each end. I didn’t like it because I was totally exposed, there was nowhere to hide when the train came to a station. But it was all I had, I’d walked up and down the line of cars and couldn’t find anything better. So I got on and sat down at the front end, with my back to the end wall. And waited.
Figure 2. Flatcar with ends. Note that the deck is long and narrow, and lacks any type of handholds except the sockets for the stakes at the edges of the deck.
Suddenly, the flatcar was slammed back as the massive locomotive engine hooked up. I was surprised by the sudden motion. Later I learned to recognize the noise as the cars slammed together, one after one, down the line after the engine hit the end to hook up or to start pulling. I learned to brace myself at the sound before my railcar jumped, and to recognize whether the sound meant the car would jump backwards or forwards. But that first night, I knew nothing, I just got slammed backwards. After another wait that seemed interminable, we rolled out. Soon the train was slowly pulling out of Belen. The moon was fairly high in the sky by that time, the air was desert clear, and as the train slowly picked up speed, the wind was icy. I put on another layer of clothing.
At first, the train moved gently out of the division. We started to roll at a very gradually increasing speed up a long incline. The night was fairly cold, and I was on top of the world, finally I was riding the freights. One beauty of the train is that it goes where people and cars aren’t. So I rolled through the night with only the moonlight under a crystal cold sky. I can’t tell you how I felt right then, like I’d conquered the world, like I was the king of the hobos, my hat would barely encompass my head, I was the anointed one … a feeling which, in my now much longer experience, I find is often followed by curious circumstances, and unexpected and often unwelcome occurrences, and this was no exception.
I later learned that some flatcars, either flats or flats with ends, are mild-mannered. They roll along smooth as glass on most any rail-bed. Other flatcars have rather nasty habits when they’re empty. When they get up to speed, they start to flex and twist from corner to corner, a great racking movement where one end twists one way and the other end twists the other way. Afterwards I heard hobos call them “Galloping Gerties”. But then, I knew nothing about Gertie.
So I was sitting there convinced I had it all sussed out, king of the road, top of the heap … and as the train picked up speed, first the flatcar started to flex gently, a few inches up and down corner to corner. And at first it wasn’t much, but as the train’s speed continued to increase, so did the flexing. And soon the flatcar was twisting and bucking like a wild horse of my cowboy days, jerking up and down a foot (30 cm) or more every couple seconds. I could no longer sit down, I was being flung in the air, and sometimes smashed back up again by the rising floor of the flatcar as I fell down after the first launching. The moonlit landscape was flashing by in jerks and fits as I bounced. I knew I’d be beat to a pulp by an hour of that, and I had hours ahead. I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t stay where I was, I had no choice, I had to move.
I looked back, down the moonlit length of the flatcar. Mistake. Bad mistake. For the first time I had a full appreciation of what was happening. In the moonlight, the far end of the car twisted and jumped to the right as my end jerked to the left. The whole car was shaking and racking and groaning, strange mechanical wailings issuing from unseen connections, and of course there is nothing to hang onto anywhere except at the ends, and there are no handrails on the deck of a flatcar, just the boulders whizzing by, and gravel and death and trees flashing past on either side, and red railroad signal lights and death’s crimson gaze blinking blood in the moonlight, framing that godawful crazy jumping bucking length of featureless steel deck, no handhold until the holes at the very edges if you start to slide towards …
My mind skittered away from that slippery slide in fear and I turned and pointedly looked the other way. I decided that I didn’t care in the slightest what I might find ahead of me, I was going forwards, in fact I wasn’t even going to look backwards again, it was much too ugly. One way or the other, I couldn’t stay on galloping Gertie, the bitch would kill me and the idea of walking the length of that flexing, jerking, bouncing slippery steel plate turned my bowels to water, so forwards it was.
There are steps up and around to get past the ends on the flats, U-shaped steel bars welded to the cars, slippery and small. I climbed around and down. My backpack kept pulling me off-balance. There’s a narrow ledge to stand on once you get behind the ends. I rested a moment. Then I had to get across from my car to the car in front. I looked to see how I would make the crossing, seeking out and deciphering life-and-death details of a totally unfamiliar situation in the moonlight.
The cars are joined only by the “knuckle coupler” that you see between all freight cars. It forms a narrow, constantly shifting, insecure pathway between cars, with no handholds of any kind. I could see the cross-ties flashing below me in the moonlight, I quickly looked away. I decided looking down was not a good plan. But I had to look down. I dithered as long as I could. I established the location of the air hoses coupling the cars, potential snares. I watched how the knuckles moved. Eventually I’d seen where everything was, two or three times. But I still couldn’t make myself do it … and galloping Gertie kept trying to buck me off. What finally decided me was the strangely comforting thought—“Well, at least I only have to cross this butt-ugly son-of-a-bitch once.” So I gathered all my courage, and planned my steps, and skittered as quickly as possible across the knuckle coupler from car to car, grabbing on to the other side like a drowning man latching on to a liferaft. For a long moment I clung there without moving, just happy not to be slammed up and down. Things were looking better.
The end of the car that I was now standing on looked from my vantage point like the end of a regular railroad boxcar, the kind like a giant long box with walls and a roof. I racked my memory, but I couldn’t recall any details about this car from when I’d first got on the flatcar. I stuck my head around the corners and looked forward. No sign of a boxcar door on either side, just high walls all around. There was only a narrow ledge where I was standing. Whatever kind of a car it was, I needed to get up on the roof of the car and keep moving forwards, I couldn’t stay there. I started up the U-shaped bars that passed for a ladder on the end of the car.
But when I got to the top of the ladder and blithely stuck my head up over the top edge to see how I’d proceed forwards, something hard smacked into my forehead. I was totally shocked, it was completely unexpected, as if someone slapped my face in the middle of a peaceful conversation, I almost lost my grip in my surprise, I pulled my head back down below the edge and clung to the ladder. I had no idea what had hit me, but I didn’t like it. After I felt my face, I could see some blood on my fingers. It looked black in the moonlight. I crouched down on the ladder, protected by the top edge of the car, wondering what the hell hit me. Carefully, I peeked over the parapet again, and in the moonlight I could see that what I was traveling on wasn’t a boxcar at all. It was an “open hopper” car with no roof, and it was filled with wood chips right up to the brim, chipped up logs going to the pulp mill, small chunks of wood actually. And as the train rumbled through the night, the wind was picking up the chips and chunks of wood and slinging them back along the length of the train at forty-five miles an hour (20 m/sec) or so. There was no way I could face that machine gun spray of wooden bullets without an armored suit. I’d been incredibly lucky, the piece that had hit my face was a small one, a larger one and I could have released my grip on the ladder from the shock and fallen down between the cars … my stomach churned.
I climbed down the ladder, shivering with fear, and with the delayed reaction to being hit in the face, and with the bitter cold. I considered my options.
Unfortunately for the “considering” part, I didn’t have any options. There was nothing to consider. Fact. I couldn’t go over the parapet into the face of the wood chip machine gun. Fact. I couldn’t cling like a gecko to the vertical ladder for unknown hours. Fact. There was no path along the sheer vertical sides of the hopper car. Fact. I couldn’t stay on the ledge I was on, way too thin, I’d drop from exhaustion.
Conclusion? Duh. I had to go back, and cross that eternally thrice-damned knuckle coupler again. My gibbering mind resolutely refused to even consider what I would do after that. It protected me, on some level it knew I simply couldn’t afford to go there. One deadly opportunity at a time, what might kill me next would just have to wait its damn turn, I was too busy staying alive now to even consider the future.
Don’t believe what they tell you. It doesn’t get easier with practice. That’s pure bull. It was not one bit easier to cross going back, it was harder. The cross-ties were still a terrifying blur underneath. They hadn’t gotten around to installing a handrail in my absence. Plus although the car I was on was loaded and stable, I’d be mounting Gertie while she was bucking and straining in the moonlight. All I could do at that point is figure out my movement plan, where I’d place my feet, where I’d end up on the other side. Then pick a moment in time and balance my backpack and go for it. Somehow I started across again, my only memory of the trip the blur under my feet and all my total focus on the knuckle, and I made it and I climbed around the end of the flailing, lashing flatcar, out of the wood chips, and reconsidered my lack of options. I found that if I flexed my knees with Gertie’s bucking I could stand up at the end of the flatcar, but only because I could hold on to the steps on the vertical end. If I let go it looked like I was failing a drunk driving test, staggering, struggling to stay upright. It was exhausting just to stand holding on, I was thrown back and forth by the flatcar. But time was running out. The train was rolling along a long straight flat section, and it was still picking up speed, bucking higher and higher. I had to get off the car before it threw me overboard. The pucker factor before even starting that death walk was well in the red, what would it be like in the middle? Again my mind skittered away … and slowly, against my will and driven by the harsh lash of necessity, I prized my hands finger by finger loose from the last handhold and started the agonizing trip towards the other end of the flatcar.
At the front end of the car, I’d been protected from the flying wood chips. But as soon as I started toward the rear of the car, they started to hit me. Stumbling and struggling to stay upright on the wildly flexing flatcar floor, increasingly blasted by soda-cracker-sized pieces of wood driven by the wind as I moved forwards, I found I couldn’t stand up. I dropped to my hands and knees and I cursed and clawed my way toward the far end of the car, struggling to stay away from either terrifying edge of the unending length of featureless slippery steel, the edge where death cheerfully waved and smiled and beckoned me every time I took my eyes off the floor beneath me to check my position. Incessantly pummeled by the wood chips, slammed up and down and scrabbling like a demented crab on my hands and knees to keep away from certain death, first shrinking away from one side, then frantically clawing for distance from the other side, for what seemed like longer than my entire lifetime up until then, I finally looked up to find myself cast up at the foot of the far end of the car, and I used the steps on the end to stand again, the wood chips peppering against my back, and clambered clumsily up and over the steel ladder around the end, and stood once again on the narrow ledge and clung to the far side to recover. I was alive, ah, I was alive and away from death’s beckoning doorstep. The wood chips couldn’t get me there, and I could catch my breath, although it was still hard to hang on to the bucking flatcar. I clung to the steel stair rods and tried to recover.
But that just brought me face to face with what I had determinedly avoided up until then, the new ugliness, the ugliness that once again my mind had resolutely ignored during my draining, terrifying peregrination from one end of galloping Gertie to the other.
I still had to cross another knuckle coupling to get off of the bitch.
Each one was harder than the last, it never got easier, and by now Gertie was into serious bucking mode, frog hopping, changing leads, sunfishing, reversing direction, the whole rodeo repertoire. And with the jumping and plunging, it was still necessary to do that slow countdown, at this point I knew it was 1 – 2 – 3, I planned it out, my first foot will go on the back side of the near knuckle, second foot on the flat spot beyond the far knuckle, third step onto that skinny ledge, I see where the handhold is, I have it all planned out, I know where the air hoses are. I’m ready. I readjust my backpack, and I start to take the first step …
… and the train hits some funny spot in the rails, and the knuckles flex and slam and shake side to side, and Gertie puts an extra hitch in her getalong, and my hands freeze around the cold steel steps to keep me from moving and my heart freezes in fear, and after that it’s even harder to go the second time.
It’s curious to be in a situation where you have one and only one option. Usually in life, you can do something, there’s almost always a Plan B—call the tow truck, try another route, call the cops, use another tool, get in touch with your mom, go ’round the back way, ring the office, usually in life you have more than one path open to you. Unfortunately, that was not my situation.
There was no Plan B for me, so eventually I was forced take my heart into my hand, at the given instant I just let go and took the first step and once again I crossed the knuckles in the uncaring moonlight with the cross ties scything a lethal hiss just below my feet and they still haven’t installed the damn handrails and I don’t ever look at the train rails hungrily glistening below, I never look at the rails, nevernevernever look there, I just go and don’t stop for anything, across and over and onto the next car … man, I hate train knuckles …
When my heart calmed down enough for me to look around, I found that I was at the end of a “gondola” car, a flatcar with low sides about four feet (one metre) tall. I climbed in. There was a small open space for me to stand, maybe a metre (yard) across and running the width of the car. Beyond that my way was totally blocked. I faced a tall wall, the near end of a stack of forty-foot (12m) lengths of 12″ (30 cm) steel pipe. I couldn’t go through them. There was no way over them, they were piled in a pyramid. There was a small space in front of the stack of pipes. I was done, the game was up, couldn’t go back, and I wouldn’t go forwards, no way I was going forwards. That much was clear.
Now that the adrenalin level had dropped out of the stratosphere, and I wasn’t riding Gertie, and now that my heart had stopped beating on the walls of its bony prison in a fearful attempt to escape, suddenly I was both totally drained, exhausted like I’d couldn’t remember ever being before in my life, and cold, an interplanetary chill that went to the bone. The wind from the speed of the train was frigid beyond belief. I looked around, I could see for miles. The moon rode over the high desert, mocking, ice-bound. I could feel the cold of outer space sucking the heat out of the landscape through the bone-dry high desert air. I opened my backpack that was somehow still with me. I put on every piece of clothing in the pack. Every shirt. Every pair of pants. I put all my socks on, one extra pair on my feet and the rest on my hands. I had a ratty old GI sleeping bag. I got inside, all the way inside, and pulled the opening closed.
That driving, shrieking, swirling railroad wind was blowing from far beyond Jupiter. It just laughed at me.
It didn’t have to come through no steekin’ openings, instead it came blasting straight through the sleeping bag and stabbed its icy fingers past all of my clothes, skittered down my back, froze my feet, made my teeth ache, ran over my stomach, tormented my ears. I dozed fitfully, shivering, bitter cold, teeth chattering in time with train wheels, and never able to tamp down my constant fear. I would push it away, and it would come back, again and again.
I was afraid, a fear I couldn’t quell, because in the moonlight I had clearly seen that the only chains on the load went around the pipes themselves. Nothing but their own weight held them from sliding along the body of the gondola car, and pipes are hollow, so not much weight. Mel had warned me not to do exactly what I had to do, put myself in the path of shifting cargo … so I spent the rest of the ride fearing that the engineer would slam on the brakes and the whole load of steel pipe would slam forwards against the steel end of the gondola car, and they’d find my body in a couple weeks by the smell, divided into perfect 12 inch cookie-cutter sections, baking on some railway siding in the hot desert sun … not a conducive image for a peaceful night’s rest.
At the next division, in northern Arizona, I jumped off of that traveling mousetrap as soon as it slowed down, actually before it was even slow enough, I was inexperienced, my return to earth was far less than graceful, but thankfully not particularly spectacular. I was just glad to be terrestrial again, because when that gondola car slammed to a stop somewhere in the yard, I damn sure wasn’t going to be inside with the pipes. Back on the earth, stiff and cold, I found a dark corner of the surrounding desert and fell asleep, wrapped up in my sleeping bag. At least there wasn’t much wind, and I slept warm and toasty … I had on plenty of layers.
…
I awoke sweating and cooking in the morning sun, with my mouth all dry, roasting inside my clothes. I sat up and looked around. Stone desert. I grinned at the sky, happy to my toes to be alive and warm. I drank some water from the canteen Mel had remembered, peeled off layer after layer after layer, and started out again. I walked from where I’d jumped, along the rails, maybe a mile to the freight yard at the division. I’d lived through my first freight train ride, and I knew it damn well had to get better from there … because I couldn’t conceive of any possible way it could ever get worse. And indeed, despite making a couple of half-hearted attempts on my personal best for raw freight train ugliness, attempts that I don’t care to remember, I’ve never had a worse freight train ride in my life.
As if to mock me, my next ride was the absolute opposite. I hit the mythical hobo jackpot. On the spur line making up for the west there was an “auto rack”, a specialized railcar for carrying automobiles. And on the top there was a pickup truck, oh my. I scrambled up the sides to the top of the auto rack, tossed my gear in the back of the pickup, and got in. I rode that way all across the northern end of Arizona. I tell you, friends, on a fine warm day there is no more noble means of transportation on this planet. The truck was strapped down by the axles, so the suspension of the truck soaks up all the road shocks, you ride in luxurious comfort. The body of the pickup blocks the wind, you can sit up and look out over your domain, you can see forever. And since yes, it is illegal to ride the rails, being up high I could simply lie down and be totally hidden from the railroad bulls that patrol the railyards at the divisions, and from the stationmasters in the stations.
So I rode through the miles of lovely early spring in all of the comfort and ease and luxury that a man could every want. My eagle’s eyrie even looked down on the dome cars of the passing passenger trains. After going through icy hobo hell, I spent the day in warm hobo heaven, what the hobos call the “Big Rock Candy Mountain” where the cigarette trees grow, basking in the sunshine.
“In the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the cops have wooden legs
The bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers’ trees are full of fruit, the barns are full of hay …”
Heaven indeed … after dark we came into the next division. I got out and got directions from a switchman. He said they were making up a train on a certain track, call it number 5, and it wouldn’t leave ’til after dawn. I walked along the main line reading the numbers on the switches until I found track number five, and I had good luck again. I found an empty boxcar this time, the first one I’d found. I looked around and found a stick of wood. I got in the freight car, and used the stick to jam the door mechanism so it couldn’t slam shut and trap me inside, as Mel had warned me to do. I lay down and went to sleep in my bag near the middle of the boxcar.
Early in the morning, about 3 am, I felt a bump as a locomotive hooked up to the string of cars. Not long after that, we started to move. “We’re starting early,” I thought, “the switchman said not until after first light”. I looked out of the open door of the boxcar, I could see the scenery start to move in the moonlight. I fell back to sleep as the train started to roll out West, and the miles started moving under me. I was glad to be on my way again.
Now, unknown to me at that time, in some railroad yards, there is a small artificial hill built at one end of the yard. It is used to sort the railroad cars onto separate tracks by destination. It works like this. A small “donkey” locomotive slowly pushes a long string of railroad cars up and over the crest of the small hill. One by one, each car is released separately from the string as it comes over the hilltop, and it merrily rolls downhill picking up speed and heads out on the main line across the flat. And that single car runs easily and smoothly along the main line, with only that slow soporific click of the rails to show it’s moving as it heads down the main track to be attached up to other cars already hooked up together and waiting on some given side track branching off of the main line. And at some point in each car’s easy run a switch on the main line is thrown, and that single car is shunted off the main line onto the side track, to add to the correct new string of cars being made up to go somewhere else.
And now imagine, if you will, that in the middle of that smoothly running boxcar you can see there in the moonlight, rolling its solitary way down the main line, an adult imbecile lies sleeping, unsuspecting, his head full of idiotic dreams of a locomotive pulling his boxcar westward and the endless miles unrolling beneath his recumbent form …
And when, at the end of that lovely long run from the top of the little hill, and after being switched onto the proper side track, that smoothly running empty boxcar finally hit the three dozen or so stationary, fully loaded cars that were its new partners, it made a horrendous, brain-squeezing, heart-stopping, sleep-destroying, Last Judgement trumpet crash of metal on metal and stopped.
Instantly.
The three dozen or so fully loaded freight cars we hit didn’t move one bit, and the car I was in came to a total and complete halt. Instantly.
I can’t blame my body for what followed.
It simply obeyed the law. In this case the relevant statute was Newton’s, which says “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.”
Unfortunately for me, the kind of motion my body tended to stay in would have done honor to a Roadrunner cartoon. I was sleeping crosswise to the rails in my sleeping bag, and when the boxcar stopped I was rolled over and over like a log, two or three times, and I got seriously slammed and flattened against the end wall. I would have peeled off of the wall and dropped to the ground after the impact like in a cartoon too, but I was already on the ground, so instead I was still plastered to the wall, feeling about an inch thick. I groaned, and tried to reinflate myself, which didn’t work as well as it does in the cartoons. I rested for a moment and took stock. Where was I? Why was it dark when the door was open? Where had the full moon gone, I knew it would be up all night? What the hell had just happened? Had we been in a train crash? And above all, what was that tooth-grinding, deafening, incredible noise when we stopped?
I stuck my head out of my sleeping bag. I couldn’t see anything, total blackness. I got up, checked for missing bodily parts. I felt my way from where I was along to the door. The open door had slammed shut with the crash. The only reason I wasn’t trapped inside was Mel’s stick that I’d put in the locking mechanism. I leaned hard on the door. It didn’t move. I pulled harder, and it came free and I rolled it wide opened, and looked outside.
It was still well before dawn. The low-hanging moon lit up the small hill where they pushed the string of cars up and over, it illuminated the rolling cars, it laid out the whole scene perfectly. More cars were rolling past as I watched, and being switched onto other side tracks and crashing into other strings. In fact, the moon illustrated with total clarity what a fool I’d been, rolling westward in my dreams. In my experience moonlight is good for that kind of thing, for showing a man he’s an idiot. The moon has seen me do some very foolish things. I left the moonlit doorway and I went back to sleep, but I slept hard up against one end of the boxcar, I never slept in the middle of a freight car again, always one end or the other.
After dawn, the real locomotive hooked up, and we rolled away. After a while, I got up and looked out the boxcar door onto a beautiful warm day. I sat in the door of the boxcar with my feet over the edge, and watched the day unfold. I watched my bruises develop. I watched the desert miles unroll on a long run that day, a magic carpet journey that included a place in the hills where the front end of the train turned back on itself so tightly, I could see the engineers driving the train as it curled back towards me, and then the engine ran through a tunnel right directly underneath my dangling feet as I sat in the door of the boxcar.
Trains don’t follow the roads, so I saw parts of the desert I’d never seen, endless vistas without a sign of human habitation, no billboards, no power poles, just the wild … I love trains. And toward dusk, mine own personal train car pulled into Bakersfield, in Southern California.
I slept in some recondite spot I discovered around the yard, and I rolled north again in the morning. For some reason lost to memory, I’d decided to go to Redding, in Northern California. I did fine up to the big division in the middle of the state, Roseville, near Sacramento. I got off there, talked to the switchman, got on another train, a boxcar … but it was the wrong train. The train started rolling straight up the warm, pleasant Central Valley of California. I sat in the door in the boxcar again, entranced by the view. But then the train turned right, and started climbing the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I said Whaa? Redding’s not this way. Soon we were up high again, and once again the damn icy wind was whistling past the open door. And that train was tireless, it went through towns and never stopped once. It’s not a like a passenger train where you can pull on the emergency cord and stop the whole thing. I was just a mouse on the back of the dragon, you don’t get off until the dragon stops, but at least I was out of the wind this time, inside the boxcar.
Oh, wait, not true, now that I think of it the train did stop once. In the late evening it stopped at a frozen siding with absolutely no sign of habitation, with snow around on the ground. I hopped out and watched a passenger train go by, passengers almost always get right-of-way, freights usually get bumped temporarily onto a siding to let the gentry pass. They looked all warm and happy in glow of the lights in the dining car at dusk, and I was happy for them, because they were on a train too, good on ’em, finest way to travel … but I didn’t envy them. I figured I had the better deal by far.
I stood in the cold wind stamping my feet and watched their train grow smaller. I heard the locomotive starting up, and the crash of each car being yanked into motion started to ripple back along the train as the slack came out. I ran to jump back in the boxcar before it got jerked into movement, braced myself in the door jamb against the shock, and we were rolling again.
After a ride that seemed to take forever, without one chance for me to let go of the tail of the tiger and return to earth except that desolate, unpopulated snowbound windy siding, the train finally stopped way up in the north-east corner of California. I got off, dead tired. I stood by the highway for hours, hitchhiking. Finally a man let me ride with his tools under the camper shell in the back of his pickup to Redding. It was cold in the pickup. I didn’t care, I was moving, and besides, I’d just seen real cold, and I was out of the wind. The next day I hitch-hiked back down to Santa Cruz, where I was living at the time. A new season was starting up, retirement time was almost over, time to go back out on the ocean and make some more money … commercial fishing again, what could be better? But that’s a story, and likely more, for another time …
…
After that fishing season ended, with money in my pockets, I retired again, and my girlfriend and I hitchhiked up the coast to Oregon. It was gorgeous, summertime, warm and sweet as Oregon is that time of year, smelling of hidden streams and secluded forests. We turned inland to Springfield, and from there we caught the freights back down to Sacramento. We started out lucky, we got a great boxcar out of Springfield and we were on our way.
I’ve ridden the rails in some lovely parts of the world, but that ride was amazing. We found a boxcar in the yard, the brakeman was friendly, pointed out a good car, wished us the best, warned us to watch out in Klamath Falls, tough division he said … people can recognize lucky suckers in love, I guess, never happened when I rode by myself. After leaving Springfield, the route goes through the mountains. There’s a long string of tunnels on that route. We were young, and as the train rolled in and out of the tunnels, and the enveloping darkness gave way to bright sunlight only to plunge us back into the gloom, with each blast of sunlight revealing new vistas of forests and streams and the heart of the wild, clearings and mountainside, we made long, wild, all-encompassing love in our bedroll on the boxcar floor, matching out energies to the rolling and swaying of the train, laughing, the train wheels pounding, screaming, driving …
Around noon we were sitting in the door of the boxcar and we rolled, a bit unexpectedly, into Klamath Falls. I wasn’t thinking too straight, likely a lack of cerebral oxygen, all my blood had gone south, and like fools we didn’t immediately jump up and hide ourselves away, we were still sitting in the open boxcar door when we hit the station. As we rolled through the yard, what the hoboes call a “mean bull” spotted us. He did a curious thing. He was standing a ways back from the rails on the station platform. He gave us the evil eye and pointed his finger at us across his forearm, and kept it pointed right at us from the moment he saw us until we rolled out of his view. I knew we were in trouble, how stupid to have forgotten the brakeman’s warning … but dear god, what a perfectly splendiferous way to forget it … we both grabbed our backpacks, and as soon as the train stopped we jumped out of the boxcar, sprinted down the line looking for a hideyhole, and jumped in to an empty boxcar we chose because we saw a couple pieces of plywood and some blocks of wood inside. We took a piece of plywood, and we laid down at the end of the boxcar, and we laid the plywood right over top of us with the end near the door touching the floor so you couldn’t see under. From the door, it looked like the plywood was just tossed there with one end sitting on some dunnage (“dunnage” is wooden blocks or plywood or anything used to hold cargo in place from shifting).
Very soon, we heard the bull come by. We had already seen he was overweight, and clearly he was out of shape as well, and had evidently run to catch us. We could hear him puffing and blowing like a land-bound whale, he panted straight past our boxcar, headed to our previous location, and we grinned at each other and stifled laughter. After while he came by and stuck his head in the door of our car, but saw nothing out of order, we heard him coming and stayed perfectly silent, unmoving, facing each other under the plywood, eyes sparkling. We laid there on the floor under the plywood for maybe an hour, laughing and talking in whispers in case the bull came back, until the train started up again and pulled out of the yard.
Our new home was much nicer than the old boxcar. It had some special dunnage bars in it that are used to wall off part of the car, to keep cargo from shifting. The bars were as long as the width of the car, and had hooks on each end. There were corresponding holes all over the inside walls of the boxcar. This allowed the bars to be installed anywhere, to keep the cargo from shifting if the boxcar is not full. We hooked three of the bars in a row at seat height. They made a bench the width of the car, just aft of the boxcar door. Then we put one dunnage bar in up a bit higher, leaned a piece of plywood on it down to the ground behind the seat, and we had comfortable grandstand seats with a plywood backrest for the remainder of the ride.
And what a stunning ride that is. Running south from Klamath Falls, the train circles halfway around the base of Mount Shasta. Shasta is an unusual mountain in that it has no neighbors. It sits alone in majestic splendor alone on a wide plain, a roughly symmetrical cone over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) tall. It was in rare form that afternoon. The “orographic cloud” (a cloud caused by air flowing over landforms) it often gets over the top was as white as the remaining snow near the peak. The train gave us one vista after another of Shasta, we sat in our grandstand seats in wonderment and watched the light change on one of the world’s most stunning mountains.
After rolling for a couple of hours around the base of the mountain, the train descends into the valley of the upper Sacramento River. The train starts into the valley in the upriver direction, then when it nears the river it takes a wide turn called the “Cantara loop” and then follows the river downstream. The Cantara loop is a dangerous section, where in 1991 a railroad chemical tank car went off the rails and into the Sacramento, causing a massive fish kill. But to us that day, it was a beautiful wide sweep that ended with the train racing the clear bubbling river down the valley.
Just before dusk, we came to Shasta Lake, a lake formed by the damming of the Sacramento River. The train crosses the upper lake on a couple of bridges, including the Pit River bridge, fifth highest railroad bridge in the world. We sped across the bridge, five hundred feet (150 m) above the placid waters below. The sunset on the lake was stupendous. The train rolled on without stopping.
The floor of the Central Valley of California is almost perfectly flat. As a result, the trains can go at high speeds. When we got to the flatland, the train sped up, and we were flying through the night. We both fell asleep sitting on our comfortable scenic view bench, with my sleeping bag wrapped around us. About midnight, my girlfriend woke me up, frantic. She’d awakened and noticed that the high-speed bouncing of the train had moved her pack near the door. She went to grab her pack, she said, and the train lurched and she accidentally knocked it out the door … what could we do, she asked me? She knew there was nothing to do, but she was still half asleep and not thinking straight. Memory is curious, I still remember what I said to her that night—I said sweetheart, freight trains are a lot like life, because when you are on a freight train you can’t put on the brakes, so you might as well enjoy the ride. And she gave me a hug and a sleepy smile, and drifted off again. I learned a lot from that woman.
Around 3 AM we got into the division at Roseville, near Sacramento in the middle of the state. We hopped off when the train slowed down to enter the division. It was dark. We walked to a nearby gas station. When we got into the streetlights, we both busted out laughing. Of course, we were totally filthy, hiding on the floor of a boxcar for a couple of hours under a sheet of plywood will do that to you, and riding the freights is a grimy, dusty business even on the best of days. We were both a total wreck, we looked at each other and laughed and laughed. We went into the restrooms and cleaned up as best we could, and waited until dawn at a truck stop. At daybreak we started hitch-hiking back to Santa Cruz. It was time to come out of retirement again, another fishing season would be starting soon.
…
One of the most recent times I rode the freights, decades ago, I ended up spending a chilly night in a boxcar with an old hobo. He was still fighting World War II. He told me General MacArthur had put him in charge of making sure that the freight trains were actually going where they should go, because MacArthur knew that the communists were re-routing the freights to incorrect destinations. So the hobo’s job was to check on them to make sure they were headed for the right places. I thought about him, then and since, and I realized that while I loved sleeping in a freight car, I would hate to have to sleep in a freight car, and he had no choice.
But it worked for him, he was a happy man, he had a dry place to sleep, and an important job—keeping the freight trains of America safe from Godless communists trying to steal our vital bodily fluids … and he was content in his boxcar.
Jim Hill, the builder of the Great Northern Railroad, never chased the hobos off his trains. Jim said, or at least every hobo believes Jim said, “The bums built this railroad, the bums can ride on it.”
Me … I vote with Jim.
…
THRENODY—To be sung at eventide.
As I listen for the whistle, lie awake and wait.
Wish the railroad didn’t run so near,
‘Cause the rattle and clatter of that old fast freight
Keeps a-makin’ music in my ear.
Go bum again … go bum again …
Well, I wouldn’t give a nickel for the bum I use to be,
Work as hard as any man in town.
I got a purty gal, she thinks the world of me.
A man would be a fool to let her down.
Go bum again … go bum again …
Chorus:
Ah, hear that whistle blow,
Hear that whistle blow!
Clickety clack,
Clickety clack,
The wheels are saying to the railroad track.
Well, if you go, you can’t come back.
If you go, you can’t come back.
If you go, you can’t come back.
If you gooo … … you can’t come back …
[Lento e doloroso]
So ev’ry night I listen, wonderin’ if it’s late.
In my dreams I’m ridin’ on that train.
I feel my pulse a-beatin’ with that old fast freight
And I wish that I was just a bum again.
Go bum again … go bum again …
So my thanks to you all for riding the freights with me, and at this point every one of you knows much, much, much more about riding the freights than I did when I first blithely hopped on board the train to hell … so while I certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone to do anything illegal like hopping a freight train, dear me no, and as should be clear, I tell these stories merely as cautionary tales, to warn the good honest decent folk of this world against letting their children follow me down the primrose path to perdition, and I am purveying this information strictly for educational purposes only, so please don’t try this at home, I’m a highly untrained professional … and yet, and still, the world is a ginormous place full of untold wonders both legal and ill-, and the freight trains are rolling as we speak, with various humanoids concealed on and in and about them in bizarre and dangerous locations, in defiance of common sense and law and reason … in a world like that, I can only wish that every one of you has adventures to make mine pale in comparison.
So here’s your canteen, my friend, and for goodness sake, watch out for Galloping Gertie … me, I’m gettin’ back in my pickup truck and driving away, leaving you alone right where you’re standing, in the growing darkness at the railroad division that’s nearest to your home, with just your backpack. A switchman is working by himself down the line a bit, you see the full moon climbing the eastern sky, and the wild mysteries of the world are calling to you from the hilltops—that ancient, atavistic siren howl of the unknown that always makes your scalp tingle and the hair on your neck grow uneasy, and in the gathering darkness, you turn from watching my truck disappear and walk towards the main line, and the first of the railcars looms up, silent, unmoving … the dangers and delights of the world are always waiting for you and you alone, and life’s few years are far from enough to drink them all to the dregs. Time’s a-wastin’, the engineer blows his whistle long, hop on board … I can only warn you that you can’t put on the brakes, and I can only wish that you enjoy the ride of your life as much as I’m enjoying mine.
In friendship,
w.
… from Willis’s autobiography, entitled “Retire Early … And Often” …
So, alligator wrestling next?
‘As we rolled through the yard, what the hoboes call a “mean bull” spotted us.’
Did he look like Ernest Borgnine? 🙂
Willis, two questions:
1) did you ever work on the salmon fleet out of Albion?
2) did you ever hear the Kingston Trio version of “THRENODY” – Fast Freight?
Otherwise, thanks for tale. I agree about trains, even riding as a passenger is superior to flying. These days I’ld stay away from the big hubs like Chicago though. They’re beginning to be as bad as airports.
Duster says:
February 16, 2013 at 6:10 pm
Never fished out of Albion.
Tomales Bay, Richmond, Santa Cruz, Moss Landing, Bodega Bay, Eureka, Trinidad for a couple weeks, one time Half Moon Bay, yes.
Albion no.
Sure, although they didn’t call it a threnody.
And still, the bums sneak on somewhere or other. Go figure, the indomitable human spirit at work.
w.
Gary Hladik says:
February 16, 2013 at 6:08 pm
Naw, but then even as a young man you wouldn’t mistake me for Lee Marvin either … great video, never seen either the trailer or the movie.
Thanks,
w.
Great stories, Willis! Thanks 🙂
I hopped out and watched a passenger train go by, passengers almost always get right-of-way.
Would that it were true! Amtrack doesn’t seem to have gotten the word. But I suppose it doesn’t matter if you’re already hours behind schedule.
Wow! What a life!
Willis. Great story. I’ve said it before but for you to survive the many trials and tribulations that you have, has to be more than luck. During the hungry thirties an uncle that I never knew wasn’t as fortunate. His friend said he missed a rung when they were trying to hop a freight and the train rolled right over him. He lies in a pauper’s grave at Thunder Bay Ontario.
Juan Slayton says:
February 16, 2013 at 6:55 pm
I’ve noticed that more lately. Part of the problem is that they’re running longer freight trains these days, and the sidings are often too short to accommodate the freight but the passenger train will fit … and like you say, who cares when you’re late?
Amtrak’s not the first for that though, regarding the Rock Island Line the song says:
Many thanks,
w.
Richard deSousa says:
February 16, 2013 at 7:01 pm
I’m just getting warmed up … stay tuned.
w.
What I find interesting is that locomotives are capable of hauling tens of thousands of tons of coal, or freight – some 20,000 bhp. In Australia, the billingtons train once hauled nearly 100,000 tons of iron ore -at 4 miles long
imagine how many truck would be needed to haul all that, as compared with 4 or 5 locomotives transporting one train
You would need thousands, though I do remember in Oklahoma, waiting at the level crossing for over 5 minutes for a fast moving freight train to clear
Emperor of the North is available on Amazon for as little as $6.21. I’ve not seen it either but it looks like a good movie.
Great story, Willis. Fills me with envy and enthusiasm in equal measure,
I loved this story. When I was in 3rd or 4 th grade, my parents moved to a suburban neighborhood that was one set of houses away from a railroad track. When my parents bought the house, they were told there was only one freight train a day, but there were more than that. I loved watching those freight trains. During the day time, I would run over to a cut in the hill that the trains would travel through to watch the trains. Sometimes at about 2 or 3 AM, a train would rumble by. When the train approached the light from the engine shone directly in my bedroom window and woke me up. I LOVED that too, believe it or not. As the train approached the crossing, the engine blew its whistle — two longs, one short, and one long. As the train went into the cut in the hill, the house would rumble a little bit, and then, I could here the soothing clickity-clack of the cars on the rail, which promptly brought me back to sleep. I always hoped to be able to ride on that particular train some day, and see exactly where it went.
I used to hike the railroad tracks to my friend’s house because we didn’t have a car — my father died soon after we moved there, and my mom was afraid to drive. The tracks were the shortest route to my friend’s house. The mean railroad detective caught me a few times, and threatened to tell my parents.
With a couple of other college students, I rode about eight miles in a boxcar from Montpelier to Barre, Vermont (or vice versa–I forget). I think it was partially filled with blank gravestones. The door was open and we sat with our shanks dangling over the edge. The speed didn’t exceed 15 MPH. The weather was fine and we waved at the cars stopped at the railroad crossings.
About the opposite of your excruciating adventure.
Again my mind skittered away … and slowly, against my will and driven by the harsh lash of necessity, I prized my hands finger by finger loose from the last handhold and started the agonizing trip towards the other end of the flatcar.
I prize my hands too, glad I still them and all my fingers, and they still work somewhat good.
Pretty sure though I’d have pried my hands loose in that situation.
(Anthony got you using that speech recognition software, or is your iPad doing auto-complete?)
Back to reading…
Magical – just hope I don’t have nightmares about that first trip tonight!
As a lifelong rail fan, I’d rate it not super but a pretty good film [Keith Carradine overplays his role a bit in my opinion]. Filmed [if I remember correctly] on the short line from Willets to Fort Bragg. Great scenery.
Thanks Willis for another nice post.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 16, 2013 at 7:58 pm
Thanks, KD. At some point, people will learn to doublecheck before they bust me all snarkily … it’s a colloquialism, southern, common in my youth, used deliberately for effect, and in the dictionary:
w.
Keep the stories coming, who cares about global warming if we can read this stuff.
Freight trains go through our local passenger station at walking pace, i have often
been tempted just to step off the platform on to a flat car and see what adventures i
might have, but maybe a bit of research as to the safety aspect is needed.
A freight goes through about 4 am, we are about a mile from the line and in half
sleep what a great sound as the engines rev up and the couplings clunk and goes
off into the distance.
I wuz gonna say…
another term for pry 2 : : prizing open the door | he prized his left leg free.
…but Willis was quicker on the draw. ☹
Hi Willis,
Way back in February of 1994 I decided to go back to OKC from Atlanta via hoboing on the freight trains. Didn’t know a thing about it! I went from Atlanta to Chattanooga in the middle of a cold night on a covered hopper car. I found a little space to hole up in on the car. The car made so much noise from the wheels contacting the rails but I did have earplugs to deal with that. I arrived in a rail yard in Chattanooga in the daylight and didn’t jump off before getting inside the yard. I met a brakeman on my walk out of there and almost got busted by the railroad cops. From that point on I hitchhiked to OKC.
It was exciting but very grimy and dirty and would do it again if I have had the time. If any one feels inspired to try hoboing re-read this story several more times and ask Willis questions before attempting it.
– Jack Hydrazine
They run Emperor of the North on TCM a couple of times a year. That’s one brutal movie! Lee Marvin’s father designed steam locomotives. Saw a hobo in the mid 70s that looked like he fell right out of a movie, he even had a bindle on a stick.
From Willis Eschenbach on February 16, 2013 at 8:24 pm:
SNARKILY?!?!
Why you lousy ex-hippie ex-cowboy… If I had been trying to bust you all snarkily, instead of pointing out what I thought was an innocent mistake, you would have KNOWN you had been well and truly SNARKED!
David Stuart says:
February 16, 2013 at 8:25 pm
I’m sure you won’t be surprised, David, that my advice is put on some rough clothes and a pair of work boots, arrange with someone to stay in touch by cell phone and pick you up, and then one day surprise your loved ones and just flat bust out and take that step off the platform … and grab a good friend to go with you if you number lunatics among your amigos, it’s always more fun that way. Jump off when/if it starts to pick up speed, it’s easy to do early, but don’t leave it until too late or you might end up in Philadelphia …
In defense of that advice, let me say that I’ve spent a good chunk of my life encouraging folks to take that fatal first step off of whatever their own personal platform might be, and I haven’t had many dissatisfied customers … and at the least you’ll have the most recent story, about riding the freights in 2013 …
My gorgeous ex-fiancee reminded me today I hadn’t told one more story. She’d always liked it that I’d ridden the rails, she never had. And one day a quarter century ago a freight train came slowly by on the outskirts of town. We were doing something entirely different, and we looked at each other, ran up to the train, and jumped aboard. We rode it all the long slow way through town, waving at the pedestrians, watching the striped arms drop and block off the roads, listening to the lovely moan of the whistle … and then we jumped off at the far side of town and walked back to where our day had been so brutally interrupted … god, I love that woman.
w.
Great writing. This is the kind of article that has me saying to friends, “You’ve gotta read this!”
Willis,
I’ve been reading WUWT since day one and have long enjoyed your scientific observations and perhaps more so, your experiences.
I am moved to write finally, for I too had years of crappy jobs in sawmills, as a catskinner with a gypo logger, a commercial salmon fisherman in Southeastern Alaska, a school teacher, bus driver, bar bouncer, diesel engine mechanic, bond trader (how to retire at 46) and happily as hospital board leader more recenty (with a couple of engineering degrees as an excuse in the meanwhile).
One of my most memorable experiences is a round trip rail hopping expedition from Seattle to Roseville and back in 1973.
Oddly enough, a large number of kids from my high school in Seattle hopped freights back to their new homes at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and, in this case , Stanford (my pal’s school).
After a happy start in a couple of boxcars, we ended up on a car carrying big lumber over the passes around Klamath Falls…and, yes, as we climbed the hill, the thirty foot six-by-twelves shifted back toward us.
We cleverly ignored them as well as the snow storm and survived to return a couple of weeks later.
The return trip was only more eventful due to the interesting people who also used the rails.
Please keep up the wonderful stories of your well spent youth.
Peter Evans
“Again my mind skittered away … and slowly, against my will and driven by the harsh lash of necessity, I prized my hands finger by finger loose from the last handhold and started the agonizing trip towards the other end of the flatcar.
“I prize my hands too, glad I still them and all my fingers, and they still work somewhat good.
“Pretty sure though I’d have pried my hands loose in that situation.”
Prized is how it sounds, pried is what it means. But you Never correct a story teller for his use of language. That is just damn impolite.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 16, 2013 at 9:16 pm
Indeed, I suspect you are right about that. My apologies. When you talked about blaming it on the speech recognition or the iPad autocomplete it didn’t seem like a compliment, it didn’t seem like you thought it was just a typo … which it could have been. My sense was that you were laughing at rather than with me … so the snark detector went off …
I take a lot of abuse, so my snark detectors probably have the gain set too high. You say your comments were not meant in any such jeering sense, and in that case, you have my complete apology for my comment about snark, and my hope that we can put it behind us.
As always,
w.
Excellent advice, being in Australia you could end up in a siding on the Nullabour plain
100’s of miles from the nearest cellphone coverage no water and 115 in the shade. In fact
i have traveled along the 2000 or so miles of maintenance track alongside that line in 1990
and it was a great experience, every few hours a massive train would rumble past.
Most winters i drive to Alice Springs along the old Gahn Railway now abandoned and burn
sleepers in the minus 4 degrees desert nights. Retirement is the best state to be in.
[The mods will remind readers that “sleepers” in his the phrase “burn sleepers” is (most likely) a railroad term for what most readers would call “wooden railroad ties” … not other cold sleeping residents near Alice Springs. Mod]
A captivating tale, and full of implicit admonitions to not follow suit …. Yet as I read the comments, I sense a certain tug which the story exerts … the sense that if Willis could do it …. For God’s sake, for yours,and Willis’ … don’t! A freight railroad is an unforgiving industrial environment in which death is looking for you, with uncanny stealth and irresistable power. Willis survived to write … many, many don’t.
One of the dirtiest jobs I’ve ever had was a couple of months spent loading freight cars. My buddy had gotten himself in trouble by being overly optimistic as to how many cars he could load and was running up “demuurage” charges by not giving the cars back to the RR fast enough. He was shipping big tanks and the RR has some fairly involved requirements on how things are chained down. We were using the wooden deck flatbeds which would probably be even worse to ride than the steel flatbeds.
Willis, Thanks for these memories. Favorite one yet. Excellent.
Even as I typed my comments immediately above, Mr. Eschenbach posted a comment urging one to “take that step off the platform” and on to a freight train. Stunningly inappropriate! I worked in the railroad industry for 30 years. Dad, Grandpa, brothers worked decades in the industry before me. Safety was always paramount. Consider for a moment, Mr. Eschenbach, the railroad workers who would have discovered your remains and those of your friend. Consider the impact on the railroad “bull” having to find relatives to notify. Consider … railroads are operated by fellow human beings whose very lives are at stake every shift. Don’t add to their burden by illegally tresspassing, then expecting them to pick up the pieces of your mangled body! All for a story? For shame!
I saw ‘Emperor of the North’ back when it was in theatres. Great scenery, great three-way conflict with Carradine, Borgnine, and Marvin. Borgnine carried a small sledgehammer in his belt, a genuine mission-oriented problem solver.
You wrote;
“Jim Hill, the builder of the Great Northern Railroad, never chased the hobos off his trains. Jim said, or at least every hobo believes Jim said, “The bums built this railroad, the bums can ride on it.”
“Me … I vote with Jim.”
Although I hadn’t heard that quote from James J. Hill, I wouldn’t doubt that he either said it or at least had that policy. My sense of that comes from an incident recalled by my father who grew up in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In his early teens, he was employed as a delivery boy by a city drug store and had to deliver an order to the Hill residence. This was about 1913 on a hot summer day. When he arrived at the residence, they invited him in and treated him to a glass of lemonade and a cookie. He said they were just like common folk and seemed to enjoy his company for the brief time that he was there.
On a more tragic note, my great-grandfather was killed by a train at a road crossing in Saint Paul. That was in 1879. He had emigrated from Germany just five years earlier and had built a successful retail cutlery business in the city.
Precious Bodily Fluids
http://youtu.be/k3BjS4JUgCE
Richard Lewis
Oh for God’s sake would you wowsers give it a rest?
Please!
Thousands have done it I’ve done it, would not do it now at age 55.
Besides he said I think ” step off a platform” not necessarily a railway platform, an imaginary platform and have some adventure. It may even mean just to go fishing or hiking, if you never had!
Richard Lewis says:
February 16, 2013 at 10:22 pm
Richard, I understand your concerns. And I certainly was in no hurry for anyone to have to “find my body in a couple weeks by the smell, divided into perfect 12 inch cookie-cutter sections, baking on some railway siding in the hot desert sun.”
However, I guess you truly don’t understand adventure. It’s ok, some do, some don’t. For some of us, well, we figure that we are assuredly going to die. And someone will have to deal with our stinking remains. I know, because I’ve had the job myself. Even you, urging caution, will leave a nasty stinky old corpse, possibly in an undignified position, for someone to clean up. And someone will have to notify the relatives, well, yeah. So what? Do you think anyone escapes that?
So some folks like myself, who know that death is our constant companion in life, we figure hey, gonna die anyways, why not go for all the life we can, when we can? I know it is the antithesis of the cautious and safe view you espouse, and I’m not saying yours is wrong. I’m saying there’s another way to look at life other that a ‘lets play it the safest we can’ kind of game.
I myself made a conscious choice early on, a rule of thumb that has been of great value in my life. It was that when faced with a choice between security and adventure, or between safety and adventure, always choose adventure. That’s how I live. And while I encourage others to live that way and to take the chances, and dance the wildest dances, I do not make wrong the more cautious kind of life … it’s just not mine.
Cautious guys don’t go fish the Bering Sea, for example, and I did. Safety was always paramount, and yet people die up there all the time. And other fishermen sometimes discover their remains chopped by a big propellor and have to notify the relatives … cry me a river, my friend, go get some grief counseling or something, but that’s just life on the ocean. It eats people up, and more so out at the fringes where I live …
So yes, Richard, I do suggest people to take that step off of whatever their own personal platform might be, dangerous or not. If you shun danger, you shun life.
Perhaps this might help you understand the differences in our worldview, Richard, and please be clear, I’m not saying your worldview is wrong. I’m saying mine is equally valid. Here’s an example.
I’m a surfer, I love surfing the coral breaks in the South Pacific. My brother asked me, what do you like about that? Isn’t it scary?
I said, I paddle like crazy to jump on some big wave, and I take the heart-pounding first big drop down the sheer face. If I make the drop, if I make the turn, I’m screaming along a moving wall of water, playing up and down the face in the sparkling tropical sunlight and seeing the coral reef slide by under my feet with the break nibbling at the back of my board.
And if I fall, I’m tumbled head over heels in turbulent white water not far above razor-sharp coral, with another wave close behind that one poised to hit when the first one lets go, and I claw for the surface and struggle to get out of the impact zone before the next wave gets there, and I don’t make it and I have to dive deep under the second wave, it breaks right on top, I grab onto a coral head and let the wave pass and claw for the surface again, bursting into the air with a huge gasp and reeling in my board …
I asked my brother … what’s not to like?
And yes, I know that some day my surfing buddies might have to pull my lifeless body out of the ocean and tell my wife … so freakin’ what, my friend? That won’t stop either me or them from waxing up and paddling out …
Al the best,
w.
Richard Lewis – February 16, 2013 at 10:22 pm
Someday some one will find your body. And they will have to deal with it.
I wouldn’t be so harsh. Life (if you wish) is an adventure. And then you die.
Make the most of your opportunities. And every once in a while take a step into the unknown. Because ultimately you never really know what you are really stepping into. No matter how good the promises look on the brochure or how much you paid.
Willis, a brilliant story to cap a weekend’s tale-telling. I love your style – Sam Clemens meets O’Henry. Anthony should make a habit of leaving you in charge about 3 times a year just to restore our faith in human nature.
Dear Willis,
It has long been a conclusion of my mother, based on her observations of my father, his brothers, his father, and later me, that Knoebel men don’t have butts. Bare minimum padding and not an ounce to spare. Our wallets have lots of back pocket space. We rarely rest against fence rails or workbench edges, gets uncomfortable quick.
Thus I cannot honestly say I was LMAO while writing that last comment, as I have no A to fall O. Besides, it was only a lot of grinning and chuckling.
Relax!
M Simon! Funny. I suspected I detected a misquote as well but I thought I would let it go.
😉
Willis,
As my good Mexican amigo Rafael would say: XLNT!
talking about freight trains , this is worth a look:
http://mvjsamaj.blogspot.gr/2010/06/it-only-happens-in-india.html
it only happens in India
I am trying to post the image 🙁
http://dailygumboot.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/commuting_indian-commuter-train.jpg
and another one
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_b4kv3bCvNG8/TFBt4RFqHuI/AAAAAAAAAHE/-3xmYmNiMPs/s1600/overloaded_train_on_river_bridge_festival_in_india.jpg
and another one
http://www.myindiapictures.com/pictures/up1/2012/04/overloaded-train-india-funny-amazing.jpg
Lovely story. Where I went to university near Sacramento there was a freight you could hop to Oregon, and lots of kids did “just for fun”. One day up, one day back. Often done in spring / early summer.
BTW, you use “Roseland” in one place and “Roseville” in another both ‘near Sacramento’. I think only Roseville is near Sacramento and Roseland is in Sonoma county; so something doesn’t quite line up. I suspect you meant Roseville for both of them (as there’s a good number of rails through there and some head up into the Sierra Nevada… )
Having ridden in the backs of many pickup trucks (back when it was legal) and gotten frightfully cold, I can only imagine the cold on an open car in snow country for hours on end.
This is a story about my Granpa McCoy he worked 50 years for Union Pacific Railroad. He was
what was known as a “Car Man” or “Car Toad” his job was to note safety issues and discrepancies with rail cars at stops in the Rail Yard. During the height of the 1930’s depression,
he saw and actually helped the men riding the rails. Left the door unlocked here or a hatch open there, Warning the Hobos if the “Bull” was in the yard. He was also appalled at the “Reefer”
cars full of “Condemned ” meat “excess” ham and beef that was bought by the FDR administration to drive up prices for commodities. The folks in the Hobo Jungles on the Grande Ronde River ate well when Granpa was around..One of those men was my late Father-in-Law who rode west looking for work outside of the hills of Kentucky. He found work in a Sawmill on the Oregon Coast.As far as I know they never met but the Irony is there…
Granpa was a staunch Presbyterian did not believe in waste of any kind. He was visited by a”Government Man” at the ranch trying to get them to slaughter their Pigs and dump their milk
for a check from the NRA (National Recovery Act). As the man was being politely told told to leave, he kept eyeballing Granma (Who was a very pretty Indian woman with her long black braids
and dark complexion.) Who setting on the porch swing cleaning her .12 ga…was not saying
a word…
Thanks again Willis, for your tale…
Another great story Willis, I hope all these snippets don’t prove to be a spoiler for the book!
Loved the song “Fast Freight” (took me a while to discover Threnody isn’t a song title LOL, very fitting though it was). I guess there’s a whole book of stories involving you, your guitar, and your music, I hope you manage to squeeze a few more guitar tales into the book. A selfish request as I once caught a mild dose of Country with my J200, turned into a terminal case of Bluegrass 🙂
When you say “big Wave” are we talking my big (30ft tops) or something like those monsters better known as “Jaws” on the N.Shore of Oahu, if so Big doesn’t cover it, I’m not sure stepping off the platform covers that either 😉
Keep em comin’
Cheers, Pete.
Willis, A magical read as a rarely seen sun slides towards the horizon on this winters day in southern England. Many thanks.
Reading these stories is like stepping through a portal into some alternate universe. Talk about a road less traveled. Robert Frost would be proud.
Willis, I certainly respect the pull of adventure that you describe so dramatically, and yes, appealingly. Yet, consider the two examples you give in response to my comments: In the first, you chose to be employed on the fishing vessel, just as railroaders choose to be employed in a vocation with inherent risk (and esthetic reward, one might say). I’m not sure about you as a crew member, but I can’t imagine the owner of the vessel appreciating discovery of injured or dead stowaways in the midst of a Bering Sea storm. Shut down fishing operations and head for port? Call in the Coast Guard for an heroic rescue at sea? Pray tell, what philosophy suggests the stowaways have any “right” to such “adventurous” action in any venue, private or public, they might choose, ignoring risk and effects imposed on others? And I am confident your actions as a crew member were fully professional, with full concern for the impact of your actions upon and relationship with the other crew members. So it is with professional railroaders.
Choosing to surf daringly, your second example, is in dramatic contrast with the first. Challenge nature in nature on nature’s own terms. Who would argue against or not appreciate such adventures. “Annapurna”, the story of Himalayan mountain climbing in the 1950’s captured my imagination as a boy. Yet, “when I became a man” and chose railroading as my career, “I put away childish things”, such as the impulse to surf on a flatcar at 60 miles per hour. “For everything there is a season.” And a place. If that great wave ultimately casts your body up on a forlorn shore to rot under a tropic sun … that was your choice and who am I to judge?
Willis, I am a greate admirer of your scientific analyses and of your colorful non-scientific writing here at WUWT. Your “recruiting” for “adventures” in the realm of other men’s legitimate endeavors I find appalling.
As a kid I was always fascinated by the short freight train that plied the dilapidated rails twice daily near my house. It was a wonder there were never any derailments on those rickety, unmaintained tracks. Much later working at a power plant I got to see how a mainline Norfolk & Southern track was really maintained. Quite an education.
There’s something special about railroads/trains that highway trucks just don’t inspire. Not sure what it is.
A couple of years ago my wife and i spent 3 weeks in California (a big deal for us as we live in London). For the third week I had rented a house in Carpinteria (near Santa Barbara) which I knew (but didn’t tell my wife) was next to the railway. She was a bit alarmed when we got there but I had already found out that the passenger trains stopped at 9 in the evening and started at 7 in the morning so this would not be a problem overnight (she is usually a very light sleeper). Anyway on about the third night I was suddenly woken with a start. The whole house was shaking so bad I thought it was going to fall down. It was a freight train which must have been very long and carrying something very heavy as the dreadful shaking of the house went on for some minutes. My wife never stirred, to this day she knows nothing about it.
Engrossing description, well told. I wouldn’t have had the gumption to try riding freights, even in the old days; I’m the cautious type. I suspect it’s harder to find open box cars in the yards today. I don’t see them in our local yard, where I sometimes watch them humping cars.
My engineer friend Steve reprimands me for using the term ‘drive’; in America engineers ‘run’ trains.
/Mr Lynn
I had the good fortune to spend a summer of my youth working as a gandy dancer. It was the hardest labor I’ve ever done but I got a good railroad education to complement a natural affinity for them.
The romance of the rails is every bit the equal of a beam reach encounter with a herd of dolphins in the middle of an ocean.
Felt like I was actually there with you. Thanks for sharing such a wonderful story.
I hope you are all familiar with Railroad Bill
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1258
by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot
Railroad Bill, Railroad Bill
He never worked, and he never will,
And it’s ride, ride, ride.
Railroad Bill’s a mighty mean man
Shot the light out of the poor brakeman’s hand
Railroad Bill, up on a hill
Lightin’ a seegar with a ten-dollar bill.
Railroad Bill took my wife,
If I didn’t like it, gonna take my life.
Goin’ on a mountain, goin’ out west
Thirty-eight special stickin’ out of my vest.
Buy me a pistol just as long as my arm
Shoot everybody ever done me harm.
Got a thirty-special in a forty-five frame,
I can’t miss ’cause I got dead aim.
Railroad Bill, he ain’t so bad
Whupped his mama, shot his old dad.
Early one morning, standing in the rain
Round the bend come a long freight train.
Railroad Bill a-comin’ home soon
Killed McMillan by the light of the moon
McMillan had a special train
When they got there they was prayin’
Kill me a chicken, send me the wing
They think I’m workin’, Lord, I ain’t doin’ a thing.
Kill me a chicken, send me the head,
Think I’m workin’, Lord, I’m layin’ in bed.
Gonna drink my whiskey, drink it in the wind
The doctor said it’d kill me but he didn’t say when.
It’ all in the perspective.
Life can be an adventure if you let it or make it. We are all going to die someday. Some of us are thrill seekers and have a lot of varied stories to tell and may die broke or prematurely. Others just grind away in their given/chosen slot, their best story that they went to the beach for vacation or maybe saw a bear. They will not be able to take their monetary treasure with them come judgement day. Their treasures can be taken in a whim. The thrill seeker’s treasures cannot be taken and they will take their treasures with them to the end.
When an encounter with an ‘possum’ can be perceived as an adventure, then life is on a roll! More and bigger adventures are needed. Every moment is a treasure/adventure. Live it will you can!
Willis, like you, I am a thrill seeker! I will probably die without a penny but the thrills were worth every cent.
Live on and keep ‘um coming!
Richard Lewis says:
February 17, 2013 at 6:28 am
Richard, you bitched that if I ride the rails and I’m killed, you or your co-workers will have to clean up my body. I pointed out that the same is true if I go commercial fishing, or surfing, and you drown from your sailboat, I may have to clean up your body … what’s the difference? Christ, railroadmen have been cleaning up each other’s bodies for years, it’s a dangerous job … I suppose you send notes of protest to your co-worker’s wives when their husbands have the impertinence to get run over by a train on your shift, complain that they shouldn’t do dangerous things that might get them killed?
If you say for the guys doing the railroad job it’s some kind of unexpected thing that they didn’t sign up for, I call bullshit. Every swinging dick going to work for the railroads knows that they may end up sweeping up body parts, or they should. It’s a goddam railroad … you seem to think they should all have permanent grief counsellors assigned to them. I say man up and get back to work, how often does it even happen?
I’m sorry people have the intolerable gall and nerve to die where you have to clean them up, Richard. It’s a bitch, I know, it’s happened to me. But if you think the world will stop doing dangerous things because sometimes you have to deal with the bodies of the losers, get a grip. You sound like a cop bitching because he has to deal with criminals … sorry, no sympathy from me.
Next, in the most recent year I can find numbers for, there were 872 deaths and injuries involving trains. Sure, some involved hoboes … but lots of them were kids playing on the tracks, and people whose cars stalled in the wrong place, and railway switchmen who didn’t stay awake. So even if you kicked everyone off the trains, you’d still have to deal with dead bodies, it’s part of your job and the job of every railroad worker when needed, it’s a dangerous profession. And please, keep a sense of proportion … the majority of railroad guys, like the majority of commercial fishermen (a much more dangerous job, by the way) and the majority of surfers have never, ever touched a dead body in the course of those actions.
Next, you guys don’t do the messy work. You find the bodies and notify the cops, just like a bartender. You want sympathy for that? Go get grief counseling. I’m not in the habit of telling grown men to get real.
So my advice is, do your job and quit bellyachin’ … don’t like it? Go raise bunnies, not many dead bodies there.
w.
You’ve done it again, Willis. Thanks for a brilliant insight. 🙂
Your autobiography is brilliant. I’ve read other episodes. It deserves a wider audience. I couldn’t find the title on Amazon Kindle. At a minimum you should publish it there..thhere are many self published books that earn you a few dollars for each purchase. If you just want to keep it on blogs such as WUWT, can I suggest another blog where all thing about traveling are appreciated…that is Travelblog.org. Please consider it. And the readers could use hearing the truth about climate change occasionally!
Re: Willis Eschenbach says:
February 17, 2013 at 11:47 am
Re: Richard Lewis says:
February 17, 2013 at 6:28 am
Why must you always “take ’em on”, Willis? There are always some who just don’t quite “get” much of what makes life worth living. They’re the same types whose contribution to an excited group discussion of some spectacular football play will be a dissertation on “player safety”. Take a cue from the fans who show him their backs and resume their discussion as they gather around to cut that odd-ball off from the popcorn bowl.
Amazing stories, and great story-telling, as usual Willis. Did you keep journals? I did, and noticed two things; the act of writing about something helped clarify and fix it into memory, plus it was always there to re-read years later, when the memory of it has faded somewhat.
Keep up the good work.
Willis:
All that bucking and twisting your flat car exhibited was likely the result of slightly miss-matched wheels. Even most veteran railroad men do not know the fundamental mechanics of how a railroad car manages to negotiate a turn without dragging a wheel, even though the outside wheel must cover more distance per turn than the inside wheel. With the wheels welded together as they are through a solid axle and with no “differential” planetary gear system (as has an automobile) in between to allow one wheel to turn faster (and cover more distance) than the other, how does a train make a turn?
In 60 years of asking, I’ve never met anyone who knew the answer that I figured out as a kid. I was forced to consider the problem by an old railroad bum helping me load a boxcar at a Georgia siding who knew the answer, asked me the question and refused to tell me. The old bird made me get under the car and study the setup until I figured it out for myself.
Train cars have beveled wheels. Those wheels do not run flat on the tracks but on the inside portion of the tracks. When a train enters a turn, the wheel assembly will move outboard on the tracks by just the amount required (path of least resistance) to make the effective (contact) diameter of the inside wheel smaller and the outside wheel larger. That way, the outside wheel covers more distance per turn than does the inside wheel. If the bevel on those wheels is mismatched, the dolly will whip to and fro as the pair of wheels fight each other to find that “sweet spot” path of least resistance. Derailing is prevented by a lip on the inner side of each wheel. Once that lip rides against the inside surface of the outside rail, you’re in the tightest turn the train can make.
The limit of the radius of a turn a train can make without greasing one rail (so wheels can drag) is determined by wheel bevel and track width. Narrow gauge rails allow tighter turns because the differential distance for a given radius turn is less. That’s why the old logging railroads in the mountains used narrow gauge. Even then, occasionally there were turns so tight they had to grease one rail to negotiate the turn.
Willis
Thanks for the great story. I’ve lived along the railroad tracks most of my life. When I was growing up we would have an occasional hobo come to the back door for food and water. I haven’t seen anyone riding on the cars in years. When my son was 11 or 12 years old he and his friend struck up a conversation with an train engineer who had stopped the train for some reason. He gave my son and his friend a several block long ride in the locomotive cabin. I bet that wouldn’t happen today.
Willis,
You are an excellent story teller. i have thoroughly enjoyed reading each one of your anectdotes. This latest one reminded me of the Autobiography of a Supertramp”, by W. H. Davies. He lost a leg riding the rails at the turn of the 20th century. He also wrote “Leisure”‘
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Davies#Works
What a wonderfully told story! It brought me back to 1970, when I, too, took a wonderful freight train trip from Oakland, California to Denver, then south into New Mexico, and back to San Jose, California. I was 19 and went with one friend. We were fairly experienced freight hoppers, and careful. I have ridden the violent flatcar (black and blue all over) and the serene bed of a new pickup. My favorite car remains the boxcar if open on both sides, followed by a “piggy back” ( a flat car that holds semi trailers). We would sometimes, in a pinch, ride in a redundant caboose, or the last engine. In the Denver yards, we encountered two scary predatory type freight hoppers who were too interested in us, and we made it our goal to not ride with them at any cost. Their only equipment seemed to be a crossbow! The train built up and there was only one possible car, a piggy back, but they were on it and just insisting that we ride with them. Our plan was to jump on the last of the several engines seconds after the train started moving. We did it! We listened to the radio to determine whether we had been discovered (No!) It started to storm outside, and we rode south into Walsenberg, Colorado, where the train would break up. When the train slowed up before town, we jumped off when it still too fast to do so, and hid in the bushes. It was now dark, but no longer raining. The predatory crossbow guys walked past us (still hidden) talking about where we could be found! We were very scared! They were armed, toothless, and desperate, and we were not armed, and had pawnable stuff. We spent the night in a backyard of some citizen of the town, unknown to him. We made it!
Oh, but what a way to travel! I’ll never forget waking up at dawn in the eastern Rockies in a moving open boxcar, then crossing the Rockies, with civilization ever so gradually at first making its presence known as we descended into Denver, only to stop among the skyscrapers of downtown.
I have done a few more trips since then, but gave up the idea since the 9/11 event, reckoning that this infrastructure simply had to have been “hardened” against potential terrorists. Everything suddenly got less free and open.
Willis, your comments to an experienced railroader about how he should do his job, and how his behavior should be governed based on your experience with trains and railways is nothing short of ignorant. It is disrespectful. It is crude and it sickens me.
The lucky people involved in railway accidents are the dead ones. The ones that don’t die are missing pieces of themselves, or eating meals through straws, or having their feces removed by someone else. Your story of moving between two moving railway cars by stepping over the couplers illustrates how foolish your behavior was. Couplers move back and forth, up and down, and side to side. The space between the two knuckles, and the space between the striker of the car and the horn of the coupler are pinch points that would of crushed your foot to jelly, but you walked right over those couplers not once, but thrice.
It is NOT that you engaged in an activity and knew the dangers. People do that all the time, and power to them. The fact is that you were so ignorant of what you were doing that you willingly and happily broke one of the first cardinal rules of railroading, a rule that no railroader ever breaks. you NEVER put your foot on a coupler, and that rule is worth your life.
Railroaders die on the job. They do not die from doing stupid things like what you were doing. You are confusing Idiocy with adventure.
Steven Hoffer
Mechanical Supervisor for those whiny baby railroaders
Wonderful.
To see a video of anything close, watch the adventures of Alby Mangels. I am totally surprised Alby’s adventures were made into a sort of tourist / adventure TV show – Like Willis, his adventures are quite out of the normal TV fare. in one, he rides the top of a coal car. He has a fair portion of travels with the acompaniment of some fair young lady.
I can’t give any more away. If you want to live vacariously by video as well as narrative text, go look up Alby.
@Steven Hoffer
Calm down dude. Willis is talking about episodes in his life. Guess that’s why they call it an autobiography.
Yup. He was an idiot at times; he freely admits that; he wears the scars proudly but always humbly. But who hasn’t been or doesn’t?
Take note Steven, that, that was a rhetorical question; i.e. answer not required.
It’s the idiotic things that we’ve done in our short existences that we remember best. And the things that others love to be enthralled by tales about.
Dunno about you but I find it difficult to conjure up more than a fake interest when others recount ‘rivetting’ tales of how many pieces of toast they had for breakfast or what they thought about the latest X-factor voting patterns.
Stick with FB, twitter and similar ilk; that’s fine by me. ‘Elf and safety is, and always has been, a prime survival atttribute but don’t expect everyone to be held spellbound as you recount tales of disasters that didn’t happen because you took the bus that day.
Just, suspend your criticism for once; note that Willis is sharing his life with us and, for this we owe him our thanks (and much edification and amusement) with the telling.
Finally, don’t forget to thank Willis for pointing out the dangers in his actions and experiences that, one day, may save someone’s life by forewarning them.
Keep ’em coming Willis and, for goodness sake, get those memoirs into Amazon e-books so that you can take even more early-retirements!
So well written, Willis… I think I got whiter knuckles reading that story than when I watched the Indiana Jones movies the first time!
How much would you take to write up my story of driving through Dallas in the narrowed lanes of construction zones with the motorcyclists-cum-pinballs racing around the through the speeding cars?
I don’t enjoy that sort of challenge the way I used to. Ha! The only way I made it through that last trip was to keep telling myself, “There are thousands of good drivers on these roads. There are thousands of good drivers on these roads. There are thousands of good drivers on these roads.”
Ok, just one train story;
My father was a locomotive engineer for a large railroad in New York State. Many years back (1970’s) he was running a train through one of the small towns up here. He spots an inebriated person walking down the tracks in front of his train. He uses the horn liberally and it looks like the person just gets out of the way before the locomotive passes him, or maybe not ? A few minutes later the emergency brakes are applied from the rear end. Back then the crew members in the caboose (no longer used) could apply the brakes with a valve if something was wrong. So the train stops, and shortly later my dad hears the local fire whistle go off for the volunteer fire department.
Aw s—t, we hit him……..
So my dad knows the train isn’t going anywhere soon and walks back to the rear end. By then the sheriff and assorted officials are there. My dad says where is he? They say; back there behind the end of the train, but don’t look, it’s an awful mess.
Well dad was a WWII vet and saw his share of awful messes, so he went to look anyway. Tturns out the inebriated person was walking home from the grocery store with a sack of sausages and tomato sauce, and he fell over curled up with the sausages and tomato sauce all over his belly, passed out cold. Not a scratch on him from the train……..
Cheers, Kevin.
The comments leave me a little conflicted. On the one hand, there are Willis’s enthralling accounts of daredevil, death-defying exploits. If it were a book, and not an iMac screen, I’d have been unable to put it down.
On the other hand, the remonstrances of experienced railroad men bear hearing. I would assume even the ‘boes quickly learned the basics of safety riding the rails. You know, to look both ways before crossing a track, to step between the rails, not on the shiny tops and risk a slip—and, no doubt, never to step on the couplers of a moving train. I expect the experienced rail-riders would view the young Willis as a likely candidate for a Darwin award.
There is a difference between derring-do and simple folly, but the line is often hard to draw.
Lord knows I have never trusted fate as willingly as Willis on the rails, but there were times when I drove much too fast with less than a clear head, risking not only my life, but others’. That was folly, not adventure, I now admit. And would not make for an exciting tale, either.
/Mr Lynn
KevinK says:
February 17, 2013 at 6:12 pm
That’s apocryphal—right?
/Mr Lynn
When you join the running trades on the RR the instructors will tell you that it is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ you will kill somebody and whether that somebody happens to be a family in a car that didn’t see the train or a suicide that covers themselves in a sheet the same color as the terrain and lies down on the track, it all does have an effect on the crew. I think the question is a fair one. Does a person involved in a risky life threatening activity owe anything to a stranger who might be indirectly affected by that person being killed? IMO, riding a potentially man killing wave is perfectly acceptable but as for risking death by illegally riding on a freight train, that I would place in a somewhat different category.
Steven Hoffer says:
February 17, 2013 at 3:57 pm
Jeez, my friend, take a deep breath, I hate to see somebody being sick on my account.
When your sensitive stomach is done puking about my evil ways, how about you QUOTE MY WORDS that you are objecting to. I never told “an experienced railroader about how he should do his job”, that’s your sick fantasy. I told him to stop bitching about cleaning up corpses, fishermen have to do it too. That’s not telling anyone how to do their jobs, that’s telling someone to quit complaining about their job, and bitching about how my actions are so terribly hard on the sensitive stomachs like yours and his.
Gosh, that’s news. I would never have guessed that knuckle couplers actually move if you hadn’t told me. And I’m glad to know that you’d rather be dead than badly injured, I’ll keep that in mind in case you get badly injured.
Other than that? Not much in that paragraph that everyone didn’t know. In fact, I think folks are aware from my tale that knuckle couplers move, you probably could have saved some electrons on that one.
Gosh, I sure regret that you weren’t there to advise me on how to fly magically from car to car, Steven, I would have done anything other than cross the couplers … I saw only one way to stay alive and I took it. So sue me.
Oh, I see, all the thousands of railroad men killed by trains over the years, they all died from doing the right thing, not the stupid thing? Really?
Railroaders die from doing stupid things just like fishermen and every other occupation do, my boastful friend, your claim is a joke. You are confusing arrogance for invincibility. I know you guys are all Union men … but railroad men still die every year around the planet from doing stupid things, even the Union can’t protect you from that.
My hope is that someday you get away from the whining long enough to hear what the rest of the world sounds like … for example, amateurs do really dumb things on the ocean, Steven, I mean colossally stupid things. And they often die doing it, just like when people do stupid things on the railroad. And when they do, the fishermen are often the first ones on the scene, the first ones offering help, the first ones to find and have to deal with the bodies, just like the railroad guys.
But we fishermen can’t get away with just calling the meatwagon and the cops like what you call “whiny baby railroad guys” have to do. When a fisherman finds a corpse, he has to get all up close and personal with a stinking rotting bloated sack of meat, haul it out of the water, pull it up on deck, and live with it until it gets taken to shore … and you want to bitch about your job, because you actually were forced to dial 911 to clean up some accident?
Take a dangerous job sometime, Steven, commercial fishing is much more dangerous than railroading, and idiots on the ocean doing stupid dangerous things make it more so, just like with the railroads … SO FREAKING WHAT? Men have dangerous jobs, and we do foolish things, and yes, we have to clean up the bodies of idiots sometimes, including our own friends. Suck it up and get on with it, that’s part of life.
And no, I’m not telling you how to do your job. I’m just pointing out that there are still men out here that don’t need a damn grief counselor when we see a dead body or a mangled foot or a ripped off hand, we just deal with it. You don’t catch me bitching about people who want to be idiots on the ocean, that’s their god-given privilege, the ocean will take care of it, just the same as the trains do.
w.
Mr Lynn;
NOPE, that is a true story. You have to remember back in the 1970’s (or it might be the late 1960’s) there were no cell phones and 911 EMT services where not as well organized (in rural areas) as they are today. So the sheriff got a call that a train hit someone and they see what appears to be a stiff body with its internals hanging out, they would just as likely wait for the coroner to arrive to “make it official”.
My Dad had lots of stories and I don’t doubt the major details of any of them. Sure a few details here and there might have morphed a bit with time, but the basics are true.
Cheers, Kevin.
Rick wrote;
“When you join the running trades on the RR the instructors will tell you that it is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ you will kill somebody”
YES, my dad did 49 years in the running trades and never killed anybody; I still think it’s a miracle.
One of his coworkers saw a car along the tracks; someone got out of the car, walked to the middle of the tracks, made a sign of the cross and sat down. Not much you can do running at 79 mph.
Kevin.
By your map I see that your train trip north ended in Neubieber, CA. Yeah, trying to hitchhike there to Redding on CA 299E can be a long wait.
Willis.
When I think of “first on the scene” and put it in the context of you, a fisherman, I think of two possibilities. First, I think of someone working with you, on the fishing boat, who ends up injured or killed. The second image I think of is you arriving at a situation, either by traveling to it, or by pulling it in with your net.
The image I do not find in my head, is someone climbing aboard your boat without your say so, hiding on board, hanging around equipment they don’t understand, and then getting themselves killed and also possibly you as well.
Trains are expensive, dangerous, and the cars and track are privately owned. They are part of the background in a lot of places which may explain why some people feel entitled to trespass and use them as a bus service. Had you unintentionally caused a separation of cars, or affected the air system on that train you rode on, you could very well of been responsible for an emergency brake application that at the very least would of cost thousands in wrecked wheels, and at worst would of resulted in a derailment.
The fact is, you didn’t know enough about trains to safely ride on them, your presence endangered the train crews, and you were interfering with the operation of a company on their own property.
Willis says:
“And no, I’m not telling you how to do your job. I’m just pointing out that there are still men out here that don’t need a damn grief counselor when we see a dead body or a mangled foot or a ripped off hand, we just deal with it. You don’t catch me bitching about people who want to be idiots on the ocean, that’s their god-given privilege, the ocean will take care of it, just the same as the trains do.”
Somehow, you seem to be under the impression that the trains are the same as the ocean. They are not. Unlike the ocean, someone built that train, someone owns it, and its someone’s job to make sure that the public stays away from it, that it doesn’t “take care” of people.
And just to be clear, where I grew up, a “real man” isn’t measured by his ability to deal with a dead body, or see a mangled hand. Where I grew up, a real man weighs the consequences of his actions, and considers the consequences that other people may have to live with from his decisions.
Mr. Eshenbach, your histrionic response to my comments suggests to me a man that doth protest too much. To construe, willfully or otherwise, my observations and concerns as being driven simply by squeamishness at picking up body parts is to beg the question of what is responsible behavior on the part of an adventurer. Of course, it may be your view that we shrinking violets have no standing to even offer an opinion in such lofty matters, but I plunge on in my narrow mindedness.
Mr. Eshenbach asked, rhetorically, in his latest reply to me, “…how often does it even happen?”
Here is a link from today’s news:
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/easton/index.ssf/2013/02/mans_legs_severed_by_train_in.html#incart_river_default
I quote the report for those who choose not to follow the link:
“A man’s legs were severed by a train this evening on the tracks in Glendon.
“Easton police, who patrol Glendon, said at the scene that the man, who was not identified, was still breathing and transported to an area hospital shortly after the 5:20 p.m. incident in the 400 block of Island Park Road, near Williams Township.
“It remains unclear why the man was on the tracks of the Norfolk Southern rail line.
“Dave Pidgeon, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern, said the train had been heading eastbound out of Allentown toward Croxton, N.J. The mixed freight train had two locomotives, 49 loads and 23 empties. Track speed in that area is 45 mph. Pidgeon, however, did not have any information about how fast the train was moving at the time of the incident.
“There were no reported injuries to the two Norfolk Southern crew members, he said.
“Pidgeon said the incident remains under investigation by Norfolk Southern police.”
Mr. Eshenbach, perhaps you have no qualms … far be it from me to read such an exotic mind … were the investigation by the Norfolk Southern “bulls” (or is it “swinging dicks”?) to learn (I’m hypothesizing, now, let there be no misunderstanding) that the man was urged to “take that step off the platform” by an adventurer. Who would be considered the greater fool?
Upon my first reading of your story I was inclined to link to it from a couple of railroad blogs which are followed by many railroaders, for it is a fascinating read in its own right and there were enough intimations of the innate foolhardiness of the adventure that it might be seen almost as a warning. Read as such, a professional railroader might well have absorbed your account, smirked at your ignorance of the railroad industry and terminology, appreciated the colorful writing, noted the implicit warnings, and moved to the next entry. But as the comments on your story unfolded, it became clear to me that your stance is that of an advocate for irresponsible actions. Actions that every responsible railroader holds in complete disdain. I would not insult the intelligence of professional railroaders by knowingly referring them to such writing and comments.
Belittle my “bitching” as you will. Your stunning generalization, “If you shun danger, you shun life,” bespeaks a hubris that matches your literary subtleties such as, “I call bullshit.”
Likewise.
Steven Hoffer says:
February 17, 2013 at 9:25 pm
Ah, that’s the problem. In fact, that very thing happens. Second season I worked Bristol Bay, some rank amateur guy was making his way from boat to boat on a “raft”, a line of fishing boats tied together. Had no business being there, just a college kid wanting adventure. Went when most guys weren’t around, never been on a boat. Went to step from boat A to boat B, foot slipped, leg went between the boats, the line of boats smashed together like, oh, I don’t know, like two freight cars smashing together. His leg wasn’t totally cut off, they had to do that at the hospital.
In fact, it’s worse than that. The stupidest fool in the world can go buy a fishing boat and license and start fishing it tomorrow … so in your world, that’d be like people could buy their own locomotives and drive them around without any training … think about that for a while.
So yes, people hanging around equipment that they don’t understand and killing themselves and others happens all the time in the commercial fishery. It’s called amateurs going fishing, and they kill their share of professionals.
I’m not clear what your point is, Steven. If trespassing idiots get crushed in railroad machinery, or trespassing idiots get crushed by boats, that’s just life. You seem to think I’m advising people to use their corpses to ruin your day. I’m not.
People have ridden freights since there have been freights. Your point of view is that they absolutely and positively shouldn’t do that.
Jim Hill, on the other hand, who was ten times the railwayman as any of what you aptly describe as “whiny baby railroaders”, said “The bums built this road, the bums can ride on it”. I don’t see him bitching about cleaning up the bodies. He knew that if the bums killed themselves it was just one more fatality, and railroads have been causing those since day one. He was clear, the bums could ride, and (inevitably, as a result) the bums could and would die, on his railroad.
Like I said in my story … I vote with Jim.
Next, corpses and crushed and mangled hands and feet are a reality of trains, just as they are a reality of fishing boats. Can’t tell you how many fishermen I know missing appendages. I came within seconds of getting my arm entirely ripped off fishing one time, and I’m a good fisherman. Wounds and fatalities are part of fishing … and of railroading as well.
So if, as you say, your stomach is weak enough to be upset by my words on a printed page, you say my words “sicken” you … well, perhaps you might consider say accounting, or something without quite so many smashed body parts involved in the game …
You go on to say:
Clearly not.
I know it’s impolite not to clean up my own corpse, Steven, but I’m afraid someone else is gonna have to do it, I’m just too tired. And frankly, if the choice is between you and the nice nurse at the hospital, at this point, I’d much rather it be you that had to clean up my remains, just for the satisfaction …
I’ve helped the ladies stuff the cotton in the bungholes of the dead so the shit doesn’t fall out when you move them … so I fear that your concerns about corpses are immaterial to me.
Finally, I weighed the consequences of riding the freight. I think a lot more about death than most men. I figured, well, the worst thing that’s likely to happen is, I die and someone has to clean up my corpse. Funny, but that’s the same thing that might happen EVERY TIME I GET IN MY CAR, including disruption and upset to the business of the people around me in both cases, so leaving an ugly corpse didn’t weigh all that heavily on me. I considered the other consequences, found the odds low, and went ahead.
And in fact, my analysis was entirely correct. I was safe, I didn’t get hurt, I didn’t disturb anything, I didn’t leave any discarded bodily parts along the way.
So I not only weighed the consequences of my actions, I weighed them quite accurately and exactly, since things turned out just as well as I had thought, no deaths, no injuries, no nothing, just a wild ride.
And no, I didn’t put a single bit of weight on whether you and your mates would have to scrape my brains off the tracks, any more than you think of the same thing when you get in your car regarding the people that sweep the highways after the carnage. That’s just part of life … or death, to be more accurate.
w.
PS—You say:
Again I say, you are off in wild fantasy. I rode on the train without causing the slightest damage to myself or the train crews. In addition, I didn’t interfere in the slightest in the operation of the company on their own property.
So your claim is total bullshit. I obviously knew enough to safely ride the trains, or I’d be dead or injured. And “interfered with the operation”? READ THE STORY AGAIN, your comprehension is faulty. No trains ran late, no schedules were changed, I interfered with nothing except your touchy pride …
I know hoboes drive you railroad guys crazy, and I’m starting to see why … you think Jim Hill was nuts, we think he was god …
Willis,
That galloping gertie is called a ‘hunter’ and I invented the detector about 20 years ago that flags them so they get repaired. You are correct that empties are much worse and the ‘bulkhead flat’ you were trying to ride are the worst of the worse.
The problem is that the wheels wear a hollow groove in the middle of their running surface and that causes them to run unstably (hunt) at relatively low speeds. A properly maintained car can do 70mph or so without hunting, but a ‘bad actor’ can hunt at 35mph.
Back in the ’70s those trains would often run close to 80 mph because fuel was cheap. Now they rarely run over 50.
Richard Lewis says:
February 17, 2013 at 10:24 pm
Thanks, Richard. Let me summarize your story: a guy got run over and his legs chopped off by a train, you guys called 911, the cops and the meat wagon came and cleaned it up, the railroad continued to run … and? The point is?
As to my asking how often it happens, the most recent figures I find were about 870 reports of injuries and death from trains in 2009, so deaths probably a quarter of that, call it 300 per year … compared to 40,000 per year on the highway. Sorry, I don’t call that a frequent occurrence, that’s what I meant by “how often”, sorry for the confusion.
So I’m not sure what your point is, Richard. Perhaps you could boil it down, it was not at all clear. For example, you say:
Are you saying that if someone encouraged that man to ride the freights that they are responsible for his death? Nonsense. I encourage people to go to sea all the time, and it’s dangerous as hell out there. Some of the men I have encouraged to go to sea have died.
Am I responsible for their deaths? Sorry, my friend, that’s on them.
So like I said, a guy got his legs chopped off on a railroad, just as somewhere on the world a guy lost his legs on the ocean … so what? What is the point you’re trying to make here? Never encourage anyone to do anything dangerous? What is your message? What am I missing?
w.
Man_Tran says:
February 17, 2013 at 11:52 pm
That’s fascinating, Man. How did the detector work? What did it detect to identify the troublesome cars?
Thanks,
w.
Willis,
How did the detector work? What did it detect to identify the troublesome cars?
I created force measuring circuits on the native rail steel that measured the vertical and lateral wheel loads. The system looked at those forces along the track for about 50 ft. The hunters would do a shoulder roll that combined wild vertical and lateral fluctuations. So it was similar to measuring the RMS voltage of an AC signal.
Since the mid-90s, North American freight cars have had RFID tags so you can database the behavior and allow the bad actors to be fixed at the convenience of the operators. Needless to say, productivity has skyrocketed in these last two decades.
Before that development, I invented a similar device (co-located) that alarms on flat wheels. Those two categories of poor condition represent the bulk of damage and derailment that the railroads suffer from that is initiated by the rolling stock.
I thought Willis provided more than enough cautions to head off any concern-troll. Guess not. Prb’ly shouldn’t be any war stories either, lest we be lectured about the dangers.
We’ve got two main train lines going through town, add in the bridge over the river and it’s a 4-way crossroads. Plus some sidings to assorted manufacturing interests, I think the very last one that used them is gone now.
Only one crossing still has a gate, a bar on each side. Which gets stuck closed and flashing, could be the weather, or trains could be parked nearby keeping the warnings active. Likewise other crossings can be flashing with no dangers. Pull the car close, look both ways, if you don’t see anything then just go. Happens at the gate too, bars aren’t that long, just zig-zag across. The gate is on the most-used line, and those trains cut the town in half for two radio songs or more. There is only one underpass, which can take some time to get to. The streets will pack the cars in like a cattle chute does, up to the crossing, with nowhere to go when surprise, train’s coming, you’re stuck.
So of course you go quickly before the train gets there, if you’re in a hurry and you don’t see any cops. You can see it coming, you got a second or two to spare.
We don’t get many cars or people hit in town, but it’s enough for the sound of a heavily braking train with crashing steel to garner “Did they get another moron?”
Outside of town it gets interesting, with just about every crossing not having lights, no signals at all unless it’s a major highway. There’s one short backroad in the boonies I take often enough, that’s practically paved at the crossing end. The nose of my pick-up ends up hovering over the ties before I can see just 30 feet of rail both ways, there’s much stuff grown up around the tracks. And it’s less than a truck length from the tracks to a more-traveled road, with a major blind spot as a small hill drops off on the left. I have to stop on the tracks to safely look before going on the road. Fun.
Some weeks back, on a very cold night, I was making a run to my brother’s place out in the farmland boonies. I came to a crossing, saw a train moving real slow, I stopped. Then saw he was stopped. Almost in the road where he could be seen, there’s an engine that’s parked, running, cab lights and train lights on. No person. I waited, kept looking, finally went through.
Hour and a half later, I’m going home. Train’s still there. I notice the small ID number signs on the nose, left side (cockpit view) is dark. Bulb burnt out? I see no one anywhere, in the cab, down the train as far as can see… No one. Is the driver dead?
I left it there, idling, waiting, a living ghost.
So reminisicent of U Utah Phillips (Philo 1004 & 1016) Starlight on the Rails and Daddy, What’s a Train? I knew Bruce well and produced two of his records on Philo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Records_(folk)
Willis,
FYI, the devices that Man_Tran refers to are called Truck Performance Detectors or TPDs for short. (Trucks are the things under the car that hold the wheelsets.) There are now many of them installed on rail lines all over the US. They are usually installed on s-curves (reverse curves). He also mentioned wheel impact detectors, which detect only vertical forces, not lateral.
The little hill your box car went over is called a “hump”. Your boxcar was humped in a humpyard. Was there a deafening squeal when your boxcar went down the hill?
Railroad divisions are typically geographical/administrative regions, not just the mainline track between turnouts.
I don’t want an argument, but I have to agree with the commenter who said NEVER step on a coupler or drawbar. Ever.
Railroading is very dangerous. Many people die doing what you did. We do indeed find the bodies. Your adventure was very romantic and fun, and I really enjoyed reading about it. But it was also dangerous, as you know. For readers who may be contemplating hopping a freight train: just don’t. Willis was lucky. You may not be.
Casey Jones (When manly men roamed the country)
Casey said before he died
They was a few things he’d like to ride
Tricycle, bicycle, automobile
A bow-legged woman and a Ferris wheel
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 18, 2013 at 1:06 pm
Nicely written, my friend. I enjoyed it.
w.
Jerry says:
February 18, 2013 at 4:02 pm
Thanks, Jerry. How cool that he’s the inventor, big props to him.
Couldn’t tell you, I was asleep at the time … to my cost …
Interesting. Do they call the stations “divisions” as well, or is that a hobo term?
I can’t think of anything more gut-wrenchingly terrifying that I’ve done in my life. I wouldn’t recommend that any human alive do it ever. I’m sorry if the danger of my actions wasn’t clear in the story, but yes, standing or moving on a knuckle coupler, don’t do it, big mistake. Crawling under a stopped train? Same deal. Walk around the end and even then be careful. Treat a railcar like a coiled rattlesnake, it can jump twenty feet (6m) with no warning if it’s hit right, you don’t want to be under or between cars at that point.
Dang, and we were doing so well … here’s where we have to agree to disagree. You are 100% correct when you say:
Couldn’t agree more, and I’m glad I didn’t die, despite riding many more freight trains … but I don’t take the next step you take.
I would never tell people not to do something because it was dangerous.
For example, I tell people of the dangers of running out of air seventy feet (21m) down under the surface of the ocean. I happen to know about them for the usual reason in my life, been there, did that … but that real and present danger would never lead me to tell someone not to go scuba diving seventy feet down. Not in my lexicon. Danger is not there to avoid. Danger is there to keep me on my toes. That’s why I go to sea, in part—it forces you to pay attention or to pay the price, and I like that harsh regime.
I understand your point of view, but you’ve gotta understand our point of view. Some of us, myself included, are what I term “adrenalin junkies”. Me and my mates used to call it “feeding the rat”. The image is that you don’t have a monkey on your back, instead it’s the rat, and the rat lives on adrenaline. So you’ve got to be feeding the rat, because if he doesn’t get fed he starts eating on you …
So I love white water rafting, and flying ultralight airplanes, and commercial fishing in the Bering Sea, and scuba diving, and surfing over razor-sharp coral, and being the underwater guy when the fuel ship comes in to port and needs to hook up to the underwater hose, things that most folks don’t do, in part because those activities are to a greater or lesser degree dangerous … but you gotta understand. Danger is not a bug in our world … it’s a feature.. There’s a guy in France they call Spiderman, climbs buildings a hundred stories and over, no ropes, no pitons, just a bag of chalk … perhaps he’ll die yesterday, but if he did, he’d go doing what he loved, not just mailing in the envelope, but pushing the envelope to the limit. In the meantime he’s living to the limit, and I love watching him do it. He does no more damage to the buildings he climbs than I did to the trains.
Finally, I wish you railroad guys would stop saying things like “We do indeed find the bodies.” Some railroad guy above was all boo-boo about A man’s legs were severed by a train this evening on the tracks in Glendon as proof that people were trying to ruin his life with their corpses.
Yes, you do find the bodies, and yes, it’s ugly, I’ve seen bodies myself, not pretty at all.
But you don’t get to complain, and neither does the joker upthread, because:
a) you knew there would be bodies before you signed up, or if not you didn’t do your homework, and
b) you’re all Union far as I know so you are being very well paid to hold your nose and call 911.
It’s like a fisherman complaining that he had to deal with ice … what, you didn’t know that when you signed up? I’m sorry, but there have been bodies since there have been railroads. Another death today, I read, a homeless woman who tried to go under a stationary train … big mistake. I didn’t read that railroad guys had to scrape her up, though, it was all about how the police and the paramedics dealt with it.
So yeah, I’d just forget about bringing up the bodies and find some other reason, that one won’t wash for me at all.
Finally, part of the problem I’m having in this discussion is that the railroad guys who have chimed in have mostly come from the point of view that there was only one way to look at the question of bums riding the freights … and they’re it. Meanwhile, Jim Hill says the opposite. There’s an assumption among some of the commenters that the railroad is the only place in the world where people stow away and hide and get moved around. Someone upthread made that uniqueness argument.
But people stowed away on boats for literally thousands and thousand of years before there were railroad men, so I’d appreciate it if you guys climbed down off of your mental locomotives, you’re not unique or unusual in any way, lots of folks face the same issues and problems. Not only that, they come to very different conclusions than yours, as did Jim Hill. We live our lives in a very different way, and we do very well.
So I’m happy to have a discussion of any and all of this … but this claim that you guys are unique, and that you know the answers? Sorry … one railroad man upthred even claimed that railroadmen didn’t die doing stupid things … I guess they only die doing smart things, but dealing with that type of self-importance isn’t much fun for me. Meanwhile, he’s all puffed up about how he’s a “professional”, and I’m using the wrong terminology … I use what the ‘bos use, that’s who I learned the words from, sorry it’s not the “professional” terminology …
Like I say, dealing with condescending self-important railroad “professionals” claiming they have the inside track from God hasn’t been much fun for me in this thread …
Anyhow, Jerry, that’s my thoughts on the matter. Mostly, as you can see, you and I agree … other places not so much, but that’s what makes horse races.
w.
Willis,
In response to your response, I’d like to say just a few things.
Primo, not all railroaders are union. I am not union. I have never been in a union in my life. I often wish I got paid as well as union men do, but I don’t.
Secundo, I also scuba dive, I kayak, and I really love rock climbing (I do it almost every day). I take risks. You could say that I do dangerous things. These are calculated risks. I understand what I’m getting into, and I follow basic safety procedures when I do these things. I get plenty of adrenaline from them, too. (Granted, you probably require more than I.) I understand your need for adventure. I don’t think you understood fully what you were getting into.
Tertio, I was not being at all condescending. Hopping a ride on a hunting spine car and getting tossed around, trying to climb into a loaded gon, underestimating slack action, etc. are very serious risks. If someone had taught you about these, you could have made made the same journey much more safely. I could explain a dozen or so simple safety rules which save people’s lives every day. (Thank your lucky stars that someone at least showed you how to jamb a boxcar latch, and warned you about shifting loads.)
The people who die doing what you did all tend to make the same mistakes. I guess not many bother to do their homework. The railroad companies are so tired of dealing with it, then getting sued by family and relatives of the dead. Don’t even get me started about people who deliberately drive around crossing gates. About 15 years ago, someone published a newsletter for “modern hobos” which romanticized hopping on freight trains. Several bodies were found shortly after that. (One guy froze to death in his sleeping bag.) The problem is that people romanticize railroading, but almost never understand the risks involved, and it gets them killed. That’s not a good thing, and I hope other readers of WUWT don’t attempt it. If they decide to anyway, I hope they at least bother to learn some basic safety rules. That’s all.
Jerry says:
February 18, 2013 at 9:07 pm
Dang … well, in that case my apologies for lumping you in with the union guys, I was referring to them. My bad. How much of the railroads are Union these days? Surely engineers, no?
Yeah, there weren’t a lot of hobo schools around, so you’re right. I didn’t have much of a clue, just enough to stay alive …
Indeed, and it was my hope that others might learn by my stupidity.
It seems to me that most folks I read about getting hurt by trains are not riding the freights. They are homeless folks, or people walking on railroad bridges. Yes, riders get hurt, but that’s not most of the stories I read. However, in these days with the web it’s easy to do your homework, theres no excuse for not doing that.
As you might imagine, I am an implacable opponent of lawsuits of that nature. If you set one toe in the orbit of a train, that’s your toe, and it’s your damn business to keep it safe, not the railroad’s business. I say the best shark repellent is the shade of an oak tree, and if you go where the sharks go, don’t bother suing the spear gun manufacturer. That bull makes my blood boil. If you take the chances, you must pay the price yourself, not ask any other man or company or municipality to pay the price. And if you drive around the crossing gate, your heirs should bear all the railroad’s expenses … but that’s just me.
Freezing to death on a moving railroad car would be easy to do if my experience is any guide.
Freezing to death is rarely a good thing in my experience … so yes, I agree with you, do your homework, learn the safety rules. Do not attempt anything dangerous, be it scuba diving to 200 feet or riding a freight train, without appropriate training and information.
My problem is, I’ve done that kind of stuff all my life and lived through it, doing both of those things (riding freights and scuba diving to 200 feet) with no training at all, and no ill effects. Does that mean someone else can do that? I don’t have a clue, depends on the person. I did something once, and a friend of mine tried the same thing, and died. Do I feel responsible? Not in the slightest, every man has to make his own choices and live by them.
Part of it is that I have an odd point of view—I hold that my life is my own, if it goes well I’ll take the credit, and if it goes poorly, I’ll take the blame. And so all I could do is counsel my friend about the dangers, he made the decision, not me.
Me, I much prefer to be as well informed, and as safe, as I can. So I agree totally about people learning safety about anything they do. I’ve fished commercially for years, and here I still am, while I have friends dining with Davey Jones … and that’s because while I love that there is danger on the ocean, I love even more avoiding the danger on the ocean …
Jerry, my thanks to you for persevering. I think we’re not far enough apart to worry about at this point.
All the best,
w.
I love these stories. I love adventure, but at the same time, responsibility intrudes. I even went so far as design a tiny sailboat that according to tank tests should have superior seaworthiness but just big enough for a single person, or two slender people who like each other really well. I figure a tiny boat that can slip into shallow water will be less noticeable to potential thieves than the bigger ones that reek of wealth. But responsibility intrudes, so the best I may have is to make one for short coastal jaunts.
On the other hand, I have done a bit of traveling, but all the normal ways. Not as a tourist. I did find myself in China a few years ago when I didn’t expect to go. I’ve also lived in Europe and visited Western Asia. I keep my passport up to date. I may go to Germany again in the fall.
About trains, last year I came back home from visiting my son and his wife. The express train hit a man. What a mess. What passengers on the trains could see was a lumpy blanket between the tracks, though a short distance away I noticed a shoe with a foot still in it. But a few trains were delayed with hundreds of passengers involved. Please, if you’re going to do something stupid, or commit suicide, don’t mess up others’ lives.
But the mess I remember most was the one that didn’t happen. As I drove across the single track, suddenly the lights started flashing. I tucked my car tightly behind a car in line at the traffic light to make sure I was safely off the rails. The light ahead stayed red to keep traffic from the track. Then I looked behind me, a car was still on the tracks. He had already started crossing when the lights started flashing. He couldn’t go forwards nor backwards. His family was with him.
And the train was coming…
I laid on my horn, but the car in front of me wouldn’t budge. I gestured with my free hand as well, but he followed the traffic light. He stayed stopped. A locomotive pulling a mixed freight won’t stop on a dime. All I needed was a couple of feet so I could turn, not push him into the intersection, and he wasn’t moving.
And the train was coming…
Finally, I don’t know what made him change his mind, but the driver in front pulled ahead, just enough that I could turn onto the shoulder to give room to the car behind me. The wooden barrier dragged across the top of his car as he got off the tracks. A split second later the train rumbled through the crossing, still going about 40 mph.
That was tooooo close.
Hoboken NJ, 1930’s. Story goes were the first Honorable Hobo’s originating from Hoboken, freighted West looking for work, and or food. Hopped freight trains. No hand outs – work for pay might include meal. 1 Original tenet – do not steal, work for any provision. Would leave a mark for come-along fellow Hobo secret signal that resident was favorable to work for food. Much more to this tale, 1st year college American Literature fab-us stuff. Fab-us – nice to know, authinticating new methods in education, provisional teaching slot- enhancing credibility to Multi-diversity- era 1962. Part of the future – Transforming America. Teachers that would not have a job otherwise. Like Political Science 101 was then become the future to crediting the concept of Consensus government -which this class was then mandatory-pick out of these mandatory electives???? A good close friend attended (UC)SLO taking an identical 101 Polisci and in his case evaluation the Instructor was fabulously robed in marxist regalia. Both friend and my polisci experience – different geographical areas, were presented the same new to me concept of graphing political tenets. Our Constitution being in the 12 oclock position, Communism in the 9 oclock and Fascism in the 3 oclock. Righ dandy, yes? What a bald face lie, taught to all of those first time way from home hungry for expression students. No wonder Consensus Science is so popular. Oh, my instructor put ‘our’ needy values at the 11 oclock. Just a little little bit left.
What do Hobo’s and Bum’s have to do with CAGW? One may be telling the truth, the other never tells the truth. By my personal experience hopping 2 different freights moving up canyon-just after leaving the switch ward in a wide right hand turn. The fab-us experience excited the nerves to freight as a Hobo. Bum’s very seldom Work for anything. Most that are not addicted to mind altering liquids were dangerous to innocent youth. Hobo’s of this 60’s time were like some of the sea faring hobo’s -Lewis L’aMour. One Hobo mentor – teacher of how to hop a freight. When to get Off. And, the most important threat-danger profiling. Profiling people is the tool of surviving – Mentor so pounded this issue.
Standing today on the curb holding the sign ‘need food’, ‘hungry’ are not related to my understanding of Hobo’s and honor but, more closely, fit a Bum of 1962 that does not work the curb intoxicated. My Hobo mentor was hired. I purchased him some mid day meals (1.85 burger,fries, drink- good burgers that when the elbo bent for mouth-opening grease would run down to your elbo)
Oh Dear i fear i started this safety debate by Willis suggesting i take the plunge and step on to a flat car and take the ride. I won’t do things that have a great chance of hurting or killing me but i like adventure. In Australia it has become a nanny state and most of the things people of my age did for fun and excitement when they were young have now been banned. The Government is much happier when the most challenging thing one can do is a computer game.
Thank you Willis for sharing these stories. On previous posts, I have seen a few negative comments. I merely wish to add my meager voice in support of your wonderful tales, and your magnificent story telling.
I come to WUWT for many reasons. However, regardless of any other motive, I am always glad to see another entry into your saga.
Thank you for sharing your life’s stories with us.
It’s all in the jeans Willis.
As a kid I would get my half race tuned mini up onto two wheels around a circular green.
As an adult I would get bought gliding lessons or flying lessons for birthday presents, but never had the money to pursue those as hobbies. I was very cautious as the father of two boys, but they’re grown now, & a couple of years ago I treated myself to running the bulls in Pamplona for my 56th birthday. There’s a thrill.
Thanks for the stories Willis. Your work is compulsively readable, & reminds me of James A. Michener. I first read about the bull run in his Drifters. Have you read any Heinlein?
The jeans are black chinos now, but that itch is still there. I’ve never thought of it as a rat on my back, just an itch in my jeans.
Keep the tales coming, & thanks again.
PS: A mini is an ultra compact car which starred in the 60s film The Italian Job, costarring Michael Caine. 🙂