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Anyone here ever rode a train?

I wasn't desperate, but I did it semi-regularly to get into the city. It wasn't really a "big deal" to me.

I live in the Chicago area and where I grew up trains came by at LEAST once an hour... more like 4-5 times an hour.
 
I played in, on and around freight trains when I was a kid, there were tracks about a quarter mile behind our house, the trains stopped there for a few hours a lot, we had to cross those tracks to get to the grocery store and when there was a train stopped there we would go under the train to cross the tracks.

When the trains left we would hop on and ride a mile or two 'til they got going too fast.

When they went by at speed we would toss the rocks that line the tracks under the wheels and watch them pulverize in an instant.

good times, good times
 
yes, for fun. a train ran through the middle of my college town 5-10 times/day. one night (around 2 am... I was on my way home from the bar) it just stopped in the middle of the town. I was with my roommate, who suggested the idea. we were wondering where the train ran to, and in our drunken state, it seemed like the best way to find out 😉 we didn't break into the boxcar, but my roommate and I stood on a ledge between cars (it had a handrail to keep us from falling off).

it wasn't a very exciting trip, though. turned out that the train ran to a mill on the outskirts of town. it was a pretty sad walk back to the dorms.
 
caboose engineers (back in the day when they had to have them) used to shoot salt rocks at us from a shotgun (so did farmers who's land we were trespassing on) back in the early 80's
 
Go to the hobo convention in August.

I saw a documentary this woman filmed about hoboing, she jump on the trail and across half of Canada, then down into the US. Filmed the thing from a video camera she carried.


Catching Out by Sarah George.

 
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