my first train ride went like this...

[Kim Chee]

I've read a couple stories of first train rides from my fellow Squatties. I searched and didn't find where a thread was made where anybody who wanted to share their story could.
Here's your chance. Just to keep it going; if you feel compelled to comment on somebody else's story go ahead, but maybe you can also share your own.

 

[bryanpaul]

where's your story?!
here's my shitty A.D.D. ramblin http://www.squattheplanet.com/threads/my-and-doobie-ds-first-train-ride.10065/

 

[Kim Chee]

...I was on the west end of Spokane, doing some laundry outside in a 5 gal. bucket using water from a hose at a church all alone. I had been hitchhiking east for a couple of days and was hanging my laundry when I see a train stop a few hundred feet away and nowhere near a rail yard. I continue with my laundry and notice that the train is still sitting there doing nothing. After a few more minutes I'm starting to think, "hey, that train is going the same way I am." It didn't take me long to pack my still wet laundry and quickly head over to what I was hoping was my next ride out of this town. Upon reaching the train I started looking for a safe place to ride where I also wouldn't be seen. I went up and down the train looking for a place to ride. Best I could find is a car that had a metal frame in the bottom which gave me a clear view of the track below. It looked dangerous, but I thought I'd try anyway before the train left and maybe later I could either get off or find another spot to ride. Several minutes later I hear the air hiss as the brakes released and the train slowly began to move and I saw railroad ties begin to quickly pass beneath me. I rode that way for quite some time before the train stopped. I got out and looked for a safer place to ride to no avail, the cars were all the same. That train took me through some of the most beautiful scenery I had ever seen and I was enjoying the new experience and my new found freedom. I was fatigued from all of the hitching and doing what it took to stay off of the track below when it started to get late. As the sun was going down, I allowed myself a little rest by perilously laying down on the few pieces of steel that kept me from the rails below. I got out my blanket and wrapped it over my feet in hopes they wouldn't dangle below. Between it being cold and my being exhausted on an unsafe ride my outlook was not good. I woke up several times that night. Sometimes the train was moving and sometimes not. I was wondering if this is really how hobos "did it". I woke up the next day colder than the so called "witches tit" even though it was early fall. It was just getting light out and I was thankful not only for the ride, but that I was still on the train after putting myself in the position I was in. A little while later, the train began to slow and I saw I was coming into a town and I thought to myself that if the train goes slow enough I will surely get away from my ride. The train slowly came to a stop and after my hasty dash to the edge of the yard, I went to the nearest store, looked at a newspaper at the stand and discovered I was in a place called Havre, MT.

 

[wizehop]

Nice, Good story..somehow many of my first few rides ended in me freezing one way or another...many still do I'm havin a few drinks but Ill add one here at some point when I'm more coherent.

 

[wokofshame]

I was in Franklin NC I'd just hiked about 100 miles on the AT that year and got a bad staph infection, I went to the clinic and got a scrip for an antibiotic milkshake which I sat in the Burger King psyching myself up to drink it for a full 2 hours. Finally I did and it wasn't quite so bad.
Somehow I had the idea of heading to the Ocala rainbow gathering, I started hitching and got a ride from this super-cool cat Travis, he took me back to his spread in a place called Big Muddy which is way back in the hills outside Leicester. His wife was in Michigan at a funeral and his kid was at the grandparents' outside Atlanta, so it was just me and him. We shot his guns and rode his dirtbikes, watched the Dukes of hazzard remake, cut a bunch of bamboo and brush, smoked weed drank beer, etc.
After a few days I headed to Asheville and a bunch of chicks that went to the midwifery school there pointed me to the trainyard, I fucked around there most of the day checking out rides, I was still dumb at that point of course and thought moving around every hour would somehow cause a train to come pick me up. I went back and forth to the little abandoned cinderblock shack on the southwest corner a bunch, at some point I saw a white SUV coming and ran, never saw it again. A few hours later a wood chip train rolls in!
100 loaded wood chip cars and 1 empty boxcar. Hopped up in the boxcar at maybe 5 miles an hour, heart pounding, chest flat on the steel. Hot sunny day in March. Only time I have ever thrown my pack onto a moving train before I got my body on.
Of course I had to wave to some fuckers on the golf course...I scanned the trackside for any attractive female I could swagger for. I was on my first train and damn if it wasn't the best thing ever.
Losing my virginity was not half as enjoyable, even if it was with a smoking hot bitch, on a rooftop, she made all the right noises, and volunteered for doggystyle. Right then and there I was addicted to trainriding at 18. I'd fantasized about it for at least 5 or 6 years. Tried hopping on one in LaCrosse WI the fall before...I was way too far outside the yard and the moving doublestack intimidated me like fuck.
Once in Sault Ste Marie Ontario. Waited all night long watched switching moves and then had it roll away without me. My folks had ridden a few trains in the 70s and told me their war stories. I stole every single Utah Phillips album from the local Borders, read every single story on northbankfred.com, and interrogated every single crusty looking individual I met.
For a few months I'd had a copy of the fabled Crew Change Guide, my friend had procured from a Canadian hippy bus in Montreal "The Weasels". I lost it, on all places, Amtrak about a year before. What would I do without that thing? It was years later before ReddCapp kindly posted a shittily scanned version on the web (you missed like 6 pages dude) and I printed it out.
The boxcar rolled back and forth port to starboard. There were bangs and crashes and all the crazy train air line noises that I now find so familiar. My veins coursed with adrenaline. It was so exciting. We rolled into the town of Canton in about 15 miles....stopped on a crossing. A man in a black uniform poked his head in. "Come on out".
The bull was a nice man who enjoyed fucking with me. Looking back he could clearly tell I was green. "Now don't touch that knife in your pocket or I'll have to shoot you". He wrote me a yellow paper warning that I kept for some time before losing it.
Years later, in Chicago, I ran into another Norfolk Southern cop, he ran my name in the company database and Canton, NC comes up. They store your name forever.
It turned out I was on the infamous Canton turn. There is a paper mill the size of a small mountain there. If you ever see a wood chip train in Asheville, don't bother. It turns off the Knoxville line to the Canton spur quite soon.
I slept in the woods behind someone's house and hitched down I-40 to Davenport Gap the next frigid morning.I got back on the Appalachian Trail and walked and walked and walked. It had been just the off-trail adventure I needed. I finished the AT that year

 

[Unslap]

Good thread.

I was in Boulder at the library. I'd heard that Cheyenne was an easy place to catch out of, so i hitched there. A young guy took me 30 minutes out of his way to get me there at 11 pm. I probably ended up seeing my first train kids and tag covered bridge in this city. I was about 200 yards west of that bridge in the parking lot with the old caboose in it, when a junker started accelerating westbound past me. Heart pounding hard, I climbed the fence and boarded the gondola in daylight. It turned out to be a local that never exceeded 35 mph and took me to some damn place outside of Denver. I had really enjoyed it but it didn't feel like a legit ride.
I spent all day hitching back to Cheyenne. I spent the next day in the rain hanging with two cool riders who didn't have to prove they were hardcore, which was nice. That night I was in the field behind-besidish Comea when an EBD intermodal stopped next to the field. I started walking along the tracks checking out the different porches, when a hobo kid jumped off a 53 in front of me and started heading to the DPU for water. He said Hey and showed me a porch where I could conceal myself and pack beneath a large grate, then on his way back from the DPU I gave him some dumpster pizza and he told me about trains and that I should expect about a 6 hour ride to North Platte. He was headed home to Minneapolis from I think Cali.
2 hours later we took off, and sped toward Nebraska...

Moar stoaries

 

[kurbster]

oh god, my first train ride sucked: I hopped on the fly, realized there was no place very safe to sit (false porch) so I rode from Springfield MO to STL standing up.

 

[Kim Chee]

Nice, Good story..somehow many of my first few rides ended in me freezing one way or another...many still do I'm havin a few drinks but Ill add one here at some point when I'm more coherent.

...alright, lets hear about how you lost your cherry.

oh god, my first train ride sucked: I hopped on the fly, realized there was no place very safe to sit (false porch) so I rode from Springfield MO to STL standing up.

Nothing like those false porches to make you want to learn what a rideable car is, huh?

Good thread. Moar stoaries

That was definitely a legit ride. You were on a moving train without a ticket, right?
btw: the pizza was a nice gesture.

C'mon, anybody who's ridden a choo choo has a story (not that you'd remember it). Even the highlights are cool: Did you ride alone? Where? Did you ride with oogs? Did you get caught? Did you know where you were going?
Did you freeze your ass off? Did you have fun? Was it scary? Did you learn anything that could help somebody else reading this?

 

[Unslap]

That was definitely a legit ride. You were on a moving train without a ticket, right?
btw: the pizza was a nice gesture.

ahahaha, at first i thought you were making fun, then i went back and read my first paragraph and then I was just confused. After a while I realized that it was a rhetorical question.

I'd been thinking:
Stupid oogle kid: "dude i hopped this train from Cheyenne this one time dude man"
Mmmichael: "Nice, so you didn't have a ticket and it was moving right?"

 

[Deleted member 2626]

Hopped my first choo choo outside of st. louis this past april. i have one of them "harry ladd" atlas's and its okay actually for figuring out roughly where to go. anyway me and my buddy hopped a siding outside of springfield rode through some tunnels in the city and rode like fuckin 100 yards from the arch and im sure others have rode this line, it goes over a few high bridges before entering the city. anyway we sided in the city industrial yard waiting for amtrak i think and then the st. louis yard im pretty sure it was. we still got lucky int he st. louis yard, because we both piled into, with our greenhorn huge frame packs, a grainer hole. Ended up being a fantastic ride southwest from st.louis to outside springfield missouri where it sided again in town and we hopped off because we thought a worker or it might have been the bull saw us as we passed him going under an overpass he was parked under, and i cant remember if we were siding then or if it stopped when he saw us. we bailed and went into springfield. my second train was that same trip a few days later of walking the tracks to the next siding, took like 3 days, it was my buddys idea, where we hopped a siding again down to jonesboro arkansas and that was a good ride but we kept hopping off at sidings wanting to crash because the boxcar was a rattle trap but like i said eneded up in jonesboro, it was all BNSF lines

 

[CelticWanderer]

I was about to hop my first train in Augusta, my buddy and I had been chasing it for the better part of a mile(it was chuggin along slowly)
it finally stopped and we caught up to it, got on and sat there for like 20 mins smoking a cig. The brakes let go and it started rolling and picking up speed, all the sudden I hear "Naw Man!" and he jumps off and face plants in the gravel. Not wanting to be alone i followed and landed not much more gracefully than he did and we walked back to his house. I suppose it was a good thing he jumped. I had no idea where that train was headed.

 

[Kim Chee]

I was about to hop my first train in Augusta, my buddy and I had been chasing it for the better part of a mile(it was chuggin along slowly)
it finally stopped and we caught up to it, got on and sat there for like 20 mins smoking a cig. The brakes let go and it started rolling and picking up speed, all the sudden I hear "Naw Man!" and he jumps off and face plants in the gravel. Not wanting to be alone i followed and landed not much more gracefully than he did and we walked back to his house. I suppose it was a good thing he jumped. I had no idea where that train was headed.

So how many feet did you guys travel like that? Might have a record for shortest ride.

 

[CelticWanderer]

So how many feet did you guys travel like that? Might have a record for shortest ride.

No idea but he jumped like 30 seconds after the train started going. So, probably shortest ride ever.
I've been itching to get back on one, ganna go alone next time.

 

[Unslap]

all the sudden I hear "Naw Man!" and he jumps off and face plants in the gravel.

Hahaha oh my god, so funny!

 

[A2low240]

First time was merely by accident or was it fate.... I was at a Kid Rock show downtown at an arena. We were rolling 6 deep and polished off 3 handles of booze before the show even started. We get inside and it's a raging party. All of us were double fisting beers once we got in the door. Next thing I know I'm in the pit smoking a joint with god knows what inside pissing in empty beer cups. I don't smoke so I was completely out of body and mind at this point. The show is almost over so we decided it was time to go outside and chill out. A couple of us were sitting on a ledge when low and behold, a NS freight train starts blasting horns and rolling right next to the venue at 2.1 mph. We asked ourselves, what is more American than Kid Rock and hopping?

Being the drunk and stoned idiot I was, I decided that it was the perfect time to hop. It was a hot June night and I ended up in an empty coal car. One of my friends had hopped on after me 4 cars back. We hopped a couple cars to meet up. ( They were all junk empties ) While we are calling the dudes we left at the scene we realized that we had been riding for nearly an half an hour. The train started picking up speed as it exited the city and into the countryside. Darkness crept in, We both realized that we should probably jump off soon before it got moving too fast. I saw what looked like a pond right next to the tracks. 'Perfect, a body of water to break my fall.' Since I was still messed up it turned out to be a big puddle. I busted my skull pretty good and ended up with a nice black eye the next day. My buddy clearly wasn't as drunk and tuck and rolled.

Sadly this is just the type of situation these days where I would call someone an idiot for hopping. A few days later I realized a fire was lit inside of me. I realized that amidst the clacking of rail cars and brakes hissing that it was actually a metal symphony of busted ass train cars humming thru the infinite landscape. The beauty of being absolutely free and yet out of control was a new passion. Now I'm much more savvy and don't hop fucked up, doing it safely and being invisible is priority number one. I would have done it differently these days

 

[wehavethemap]

Mine went something like this. five hours from bako to fresno in a gondola (bout 90 miles), fresno to roseville in a olllllld canadian grainer, oakland to stockton in a sandbox, stockton to a siding in oroville in a auto-rack. im not a good writer and i dont know how to properly tell a story, this was my first time on the rail.s. Everything was awesome but flood, and all the gunshots in stockton. but everything worked and the feeling of opening the auto rack was beyond words.

 

[Nelco]

i'm just gonna start it off randomly...traveled every different way i could thiink of...brother tried to get me to hop a train, for fun when i was 14 or 15 and i was to afraid to get close to all that accident waiting to happen going by us..later in life..was running out of ways to travel and got stuck some where for to long..in a van..living by a creek.. through out my travels, i noticed the crusties always disapearing before i could get to them and ask them how they were getting around, because i'd see them every where and by the looks of them already knew they were my kind of ppl...after years of never being able to catch any body, i was driving away from the creek...already tried hitching out, with no luck...truck driver fell through and junking another vehicle for a bus ticket wouldn't get me far and out of no where a seen this guy with a huge pac walking by...i jerked my van across traffic and up on him and yelled " hey! you wanna get the fuck outta here..he got in my van...got us beer...we went to the creek..he told me how he got around...it was free and i was down..he slept in my van...we bickered and argued...i told him i'd see him two days where i picked him up and i'd sell the van and we'd be off...he called me to meet him so i could meet his road dog who'd just got out of jail...i didn't answer my phone...picked everyone up the next day..now there was five of us...my fellow creek squatter and my new friend's two friends..i had another friend coming with, but they put him in a mental ward right before picking them up, for trying to catch his gf's car on fire, they flew a sign at walmarts..once i met everyone i was peacefully pleased, while fighting w/ one of them w/ the volume button on the radio...and he had to leave his pac behind or probably spend another three weeks in jail for trying to get it..than we went to sell my van..junk man bought it for 400...i didn't warn anyone we'd be walking out of bumble fuck w/ no ride..so i gotta a laugh out of it..spent the night in the bushes harrasssing my friend ghetto for all you can eat pizza at his job...one of the ppl took off solo to go to the hobo convention...got picked up by a guy, that already new two of the other new friends and we went to his house, where dude asked to take pics of one us nude for free subway and beer and a ride to the hop out and i agged it on for him to do it until the deed was done...once we got to the hop out..i was kicking myself...because if I'd walked half a block through the woods i was staying in, i might've met ppl, when i ran away when iwas 15 and wouldn't have spent so many years absolutely alone...fuck it...shit happens that way..middle of night, woke up to a stopped train..never felt peace like that moment in my life...got pulled off at gun point, in a gondola a couple of hours later...nice quiet funny night in jail...now down to three of us...cops stuffed us in an animal control car, next day, out to no where...hitched out of bumble fuck..got drunk..got on another train...new friends put a board and the big ass pac down so i wouldn't fall through the floor..suidcide ride...i'd fall asleep and my foot kept edging out to the wheel..so they kept waking me up to pull my foot in..some of the best ppl i ever met in my life...alot of good screaming matches..don;t talk to any of them anymore..but i actually still dream about those two and riding with them proabably once a week..i left stuff outta the story..which is why it's drops off like that..next persnon's story

 

[RockerBilly]

Cool stories.
When I was about 13, flew from London to small town Oregon for the Summer to visit my older cousins. Parents were away so the party was at their house, drank a beer for the first time, didn't get drunk at all because i drank it so slow cuz it tasted like shit (it was Mickey's). After the party it was me my cousin and his friend and this town is boring as fuck so they decided to take me train hopping. Now I didn't have the faintest idea about hobos and oogles and freight hopping and shit but I was always into graffiti and watching these massive travelling art galleries roll through town was very inspiring. So we walked to the hop out point late at night, my cousin knew what time the train would come, but we were there a little bit early, but surprisingly the train was even earlier- it was leaving, so my cousin said we had to run after it. My cousin and his friend (who are a good 4 years older than me) started running and i chased after them towards the end of this train, and it was pretty much pitch black, so as I was running down the track I hit a ditch (there was a missing sleeper for some reason), fell arse over tit and ended up lying on the track confused and unable to move my leg. Our train was shooting off into the distance when we noticed the train wasn't early, that was just the wrong train. Our train was right on time, coming up behind us, but luckily cousin was keeping an eye on me, ran over and gave me a hand up. We waited in the bushes, the correct train stopped right on time, started walking off my injury and we climbed into a gondola full of rebar. Saw the night sky properly for the first time. Living in London I had no idea there were that many stars, it was rad. Ended up in some other town where he had some friends, then drove home the next day.

A few years later I ended up being sent to Oregon by my parents for high school then college but had to drop out after the first year due to lack of funds. also I wasnt allowed to work, not having a green card. So i was stuck in Oregon with no money and no real prospects and no work- learned to dumpster dive, travel etc, travelled all over the west coast and met a lot of great people.

 

[Monica Danger]

Last summer, there were three kids in the area that decided to train hop. Only one of them had done it before. I don't know the entire story, but they fudged up getting on the train properly, and one of the newbs ended up getting run over. She lost both of her legs...but is doing fine now. (I have a friend who is friends with her, so I've heard it through the grapevine that she's all good.) However, this story just makes me think with how big of a klutz I am that trainhopping is probably not the best idea for me.

I'm digging all these stories being told, though.

 

[RockerBilly]

I heard about that girl. She tried to jump on a box car that was already moving pretty fast. I would never jump a moving box car. some people do.