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- Do hobos ride trains anymore? I can only remember a few instances of seeing this, and they all took place 15-20 years ago, when some major railyards in the St Louis area (East St Louis, actually) were in operation. I know of places where homeless people tend to congregate nowadays, but they’re not near any railways and I have not seen one riding a train in a long time. Just wonderin’. - MC
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Union Pacific RR detains almost 100,000 people a year for trespassing. Presumably most of them are trying to catch a free ride. See http://ardmoreite.com/stories/062899/new_moder.shtml
There is a National Hobo Convention every August in Britt, Iowa.
Most of the detainees these days are probably kids doing it for the novelty. “kids” to include college students. When I was in school in Missoula, MT, a fair number of students would hop a Burlington Northern freight just to do it. A roommate of mine did it, rode it to a town about 70 miles away and hitched back. The BN personnel in Missoula at that time were pretty lax, and didn’t care. The word was that you BETTER get out before Spokane, though, where you would get arrested.
I used to live right next to the BN yard when I was there, and walked across it a lot. Never hopped one of the trains, but I REALLY had to resist the temptation to throw a few switches, which weren’t padlocked.
Oddly enough, when I was in high school in Spokane my friends hopped a freight to Montana. They got shunted to a siding in Whitefish and almost froze to death before they found their way back.
We were discussing this the other day at work and one of the guys said that there are gangs that control the railyards, and falling afoul of them is a bigger worry than the railroad companies. This is all just hearsay, of course, but the story was that they wouldn’t harm you, necessarily, just take anything of value. Like your shoes.
Totally anecdotal evidence: I saw a guy sitting in a box car while waiting in my car at a RR crossing. Can’t say whether he was a gen-U-wine hobo, though.
Maxim did an article on hobos a few months ago. Yes, people still ride the rails. It sounded like a pretty shitty way to travel, very uncomforable and filled with all kinds of mean people. Pretty dangerous, too; evidentally a sizable fraction of these people eventually mis-time a jump and wind up underneath the train’s wheels. And that’s a mistake you’ll only make once. Those boxcars aren’t heated, BTW, and in the winter hobos have to worry about freezing to death.
Pluto, that story brings back memories. 15 years ago my brother and I rode the rails from Minneapolis to Seatle and back. One of our numerous adventures occured in Whitefish. Along the way we met a couple of real hobos who regaled us with tales of panhandling and getting thrown out of towns by the cops.
My friend Chris and I jumped onto a train car that was moving very slow and went from San Antonio to Braken (about 20ish miles away from where we were) when we were 11 or so years old. It was fun. We would have gotten off sooner but the cars didn’t slow down until then. It was fun but the walk back home sucked to no end (we walked to the city limits and caught a bus but that was still about 8 or so miles walking).
My eldest sister lives kind of near a big freight train station (that doesn’t seem to be the right word but oh well) and there are several genuine hobos there. They get off the train, panhandle some, and hitch onto the train again later. I have seen them do it many times.
HUGS!
Sqrl
How 'bout “freight depot”?
About a year ago, a transient was riding the rails along I-10 between San Antonio and Houston. He would get off the train, murder people along the tracks, then hop the next freight.
This happened in Weimar, Texas. Here’s the irony. The speed limit through Weimar used to be 70 mph. That’s way too fast to jump on or off a moving train. The council in Weimar decided that 70 was too fast and unsafe. They imposed a speed limit of 20 mph. Then this Resendiz guy shows up and murders someone. He couldn’t have done it if the trains were flying through town at 70!
The term is “freight yard” in case you’re wondering.
My dad worked for the RF&P Railroad for 45 years and tells me that there are still some folks around who ride the rails but it certainly isn’t like it used to be. The RRs employed security people who were referred to as “bulls” and they were usually the type of people you did not want to mess around with (my great-uncle was a bull for the Norfolk-Southern and kept a blackjack and a leather bag filled with bolts in his work truck). Beating the shit out of hobos and bums was considered sport to some of them. I imagine that they would have relished the opportunity to knock the heads of some college boys.
If you get the chance, watch “Emperor of the North” with Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. Its about this very subject and has a terrific (if viscious) fight scene at the end.
[sarcasm]They weren’t genuine hoboes, no not by a long shot. Not unless they were wearing their official “Dont Eat The Hobos” Teashirt ! That’s how you can tell. [/sarcasm]
plnnr wrote:
In fact, “bull” used to be a general term for cops.
At my library, we have a railroad atlas for the US. It shows both freight and passenger lines. If you want to use it, you have to use at the reference desk and we make copies for you.
In other words, if we hand it out to someone, we expect that it will end up being a hobo’s tour guide.
That said, I’ve met actual hobos and they are an interesting sort.
Hobos have been hopping trains for as long as there have been trains, and continue to do so to this day. But the “classic” era of trainriding was the Great Depression, when millions of desparate men were out of work, and migrated around the country looking for work. If you were dead broke in Chicago, and heard that there was work for lumberjacks in Oregon, then you needed a way to get to Oregon. Hence, hopping a freight.
I know little of the hobo life, but nobody has as yet mentioned the fact that somebody is spray painting the freight cars. I’d always guessed that the artwork you see as you sit at the RR crossing was the work of train-ridin’ folk.