#freight riding

[officialjews]

this 9 pound hammer is a little toooooo heavy (southern<- -> central maine trainhopping video)

[officialjews]

boys trip up the line

[crynwr-drwg]

Can these cunts STOP riding suicide for ONE god damn minute

As a psa, you can ride freight all day all you like, just do not fucking do it like this. You will either die horribly, or horrifically maim yourself. I've known someone who lost their leg to this stupid shite.

[themobiletravler-blog]

My first trip ever traveling the rails of life. Circa 2010 I became a me. I had the best year of my life had the best trip to jail and some of the best sex one year later. Got ditched In Washington made my own lean to, and figured it out. Everything I ever did lead me to meet Johhny Ray, rest in peace, I was coming back for you. Stupid MN trip. But no matter here I am in Illinois writing this shit down so I don't forget.

[newstfionline]

The decline of the American hobo

By Tim Gaynor, Al Jazeera, August 24, 2014

BRITT, Iowa--Veteran hobo Gerard “Frog” Fortin hopped his first freight train in 1970 in Florida, riding an open-topped gondola car through the night to New Orleans. It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair.

“I remember that entire night. I didn’t fall asleep because I was just so mesmerized by the wide-open skies and the stars shining in on me. I was just so thrilled. I just felt that exhilarated. That wanderlust in me was finally filled,” he recalled, beaming at the memory. “It was total and absolute freedom.”

After 31 years traveling the United States and working as an itinerant laborer, cook and sometime oil rig worker in the Gulf of Mexico, Fortin, 64, joined a growing number of aging hobos who have retired and settled down.

Twice elected Hobo King at the National Hobo Convention in this small Iowa town, he now lives full time in Montana. Today the Hobo King’s role--and that of the annual festival, held in the town since 1900--is largely curatorial: keeping the history and traditions of the fabled American hobo alive while honoring the old-time riders who have “caught the westbound” to the town’s cemetery.

Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, there were as many as half a million hobos hopping box cars, gondolas and grain wagons to roam the United States in search of casual work and adventure, meeting a demand for migrant labor and carving themselves a niche in the American psyche as enduring symbols of freedom.

But now with faster trains, more containerized freight and an increasingly secure rail network after the Sept. 11 attacks, the number wandering the 140,000-mile U.S. freight network has plunged to just a few hundred mostly younger riders, railroad officials said, with some travelers hopping trains only in the warmer months of the year.

The annual convention, which is held the second weekend of August, came to Britt a few years after hobos banded together to form Tourist Union #63 in a move that sought to prevent police from prosecuting them for vagrancy.

This year, graying hobos, their families and visitors gathered at the Hobo Jungle Park south of the Soo Line Railroad tracks in Britt to light a ceremonial fire, which was followed by spirited performances of hobo poetry and song.

Other events at the four-day bash included a parade, craft show, the Hobo King and Queen coronation ceremony in City Park and a feast of traditional mulligan stew. Striking a somber note, festivalgoers also gathered for a remembrance service at the town’s Evergreen Cemetery, where this year the ashes of Bo Grump, Milwaukee Mike and Fran Minstrel were buried with military honors.

Some, like Fortin, who now uses a wheelchair for mobility, looked to a reduced group of younger riders, who arrived at the festival in ones and twos, to carry their torch into the future.

Ben, a 25-year-old welder from California, said he opted for a life on the rails--surviving on casual yard work and panhandling--because he felt out of step with his peers and their more settled values. “Most people are content with their lifestyles, like settling down, going to college, paying debt and having a mortgage and … being happy with that ... but I feel like a real big disconnect from that as a person,” he said.

In Fortin’s time, hobos frequently hopped trains in freight yards. But new riders said that, ever since the 9/11 attacks, rail yards are increasingly patrolled and inspected by railroad police known as bulls and watched over by state-of-the-art surveillance systems.

“I’ve seen yards that have heat scanners, motion sensors [and] surveillance cameras,” said 21-year-old John, a Colorado native, of the increased vigilance. Now “you catch it as it’s leaving the yard ... Throw your gear on, get yourself on, stay down and hide.”

Freight riding has always been dangerous, and in 2012, 463 people were killed on the rails, according to the United States Department of Transportation. Young riders at Britt swapped tales of accidents--among them an ankle broken running to hop a train and a narrow escape from freezing to death on a long winter ride. Then there are the fights in the trackside hobo jungles and the perils of a culture of heavy drinking and drug use.

“Seriously, it takes its toll on you,” said rail rider Tommy as he celebrated his 37th birthday somewhat morosely at the festival, chugging back beer after beer from a Styrofoam cup.

“I have had a stroke. I only have one lung, I’ve been stabbed a bunch. I’ve been shot--only a ricochet bullet. Alcoholism. I’ve hardly got a liver,” he said. “So there’s a lot of downsides to it.”

There are currently nine major North American freight railroads. Operators point out that hopping freight is illegal and extremely dangerous and hope that the slide in hobo numbers in recent decades will continue.

For 25-year-old Adam Blumenthal, who resigned from a job with the Transportation Security Administration in Boston six years ago to ride the rails, only an “epiphany” could make him stop.

“You’ve been given the key to the country. You can go anywhere you want, anytime you want,” he said, sounding very much like Fortin. “Who would give up pure freedom?”

[motherfuckingtrainwreck-blog]

I kinda have to urge to just go hang out and bullshit with the trainhoppers in Little 5 Points today... I kinda just wanna go pet their dogs and bring em dog food.

[wrippedknees-blog]