SPIKE. THE. DOOR.

[URoRRuRRR]

so a friend and i are riding north on KCS from nola. been a long shitty ride, rides keep breaking up and all that noise. so anyways we break up in a yard i think in lafayette(?) or something, night time. friends kind of a veteran at this point, this is my first trip. he hops off to find our ride nbd.

im sitting in a grainer with our dogs and all our stuff for quite some time, gettin humped and pushed around. he finally comes back, super stoked to find out theres an open boxcar down the ways on our string. so, we move on over there and hop in.

this is the shitty part. we both laugh and mock the stories about "spikin the car door" and how ludicrous it is, cause cmon those doors are heavy af, and cmon have you ever heard of one closing? so he spikes the door anyways.

ONE SPIKE DOES NOT A BOXCAR DOOR JAM.

we sleep on the way up to kc and awake in the yard to find out the door had closed to about six inches. juuuust big enough to wave an arm out. so for about 14 hours, thats what we do. play guitar and yell as loud as possible, wave to the units that pass, give up on life when finally a worker passes and my friend here says, very calmly: "excuse me good sir, we seem to have gotten ourselves in to a bit of a pickle."

the workers are nice as hell, laugh at us and finally crank the door open. they also give us a fuck ton of water bottles so thats cool.

anyways, next time, i'll be sure to jam about 15 god damned spikes in that shit.
just a heads up: THE MYTH IS NOT A MYTH. THE DOOR WILL SHUT.

 

[Bl3wbyyou]

haha fuck boxcars.Ya wont catch me sleeping inside of em.Its a stealthy ride but ive had my share of close calls dealing with those damn doors.

high wall caddy or a gondola is my choice.Big fan of double stacks tho.

 

[kokomojoe]

Damn, sounds like it could've been alot worse, thats what sketches me out about boxcars

 

[Matt Derrick]

i've never had any problems with boxcars, but spiking the door is always a good idea.

 

[Bl3wbyyou]

Further back ya ride the more slack action ya get and it can get pretty damn bad.Last summer we rode in a boxcar towards the end of the string and that damn door would jump 6 to 8 inches at a damn time.8 hrs of this shit till our ride finally stopped.


Good times lol.

 

[Tude]

Awesome visual of you waving your arm out the barely opened door. hehe. But seriously, glad you got out of the situation ok!

 

[freepizzaforlife]

Seems like you ended up in the Knoche yard. ive gotten workers to drink beer with me while on the clock under the chouteau overpass. place is chill as fuck. actually everything about kcmo rules

 

[crow jane]

When I first started riding I would spike the door, but every box i've been in has never budged an inch, so it just never crosses my mind anymore.

 

[joaquim33]

it definitely happens. i personally know three different people who had it happen to them and have heard a lot more stories and hear say.

 

[treatment]

Good story, woulda been better if I hadn't heard Syd tell it a dozen times since it happened. He spiked the door the wrong way!

 

[Kim Chee]

I've never had a door close on me, but I've been in cars where the door would easily move. If there is a 2x4 in the car, I'll just place it on the floor where the door can't close.

How to spike a door:
Get 3 spikes, hammer one in as far as you can wedge it with another spike. Using the same technique, hammer another spike in some distance away from the first. Make sure the first spike didn't get loosened in the process. I've been in cars with serious slack action and have had to re-spike the door. It does work pretty well, but if you get shut inside I don't wanna hear no bitchin', at least you have an extra spike to make some noise with.

 

[Deleted member 2626]

Only ever rode a few trains and one being a rattle ass bucket of a boxcar. Me and my buddy quite a few spikes in the door up to one of the weld spots for the bottom slide. The door moved a lot but never closed completely despite bad BNSF slack action. Like Bl3w said high faced grainer. Noty as concealed but nice to see the country and still pretty concealed for mosty people that dont look too hard

 

[Doobie_D]

This reminds me of a story I heard from two guys I rode with back in 2005.

They were on their way to B.C. From Everett. They got in a big ol CN plug door and highballed all the way to Blaine.

Once at the border there was a worker checking all the cars one by one. They decided to hunker down as far into the corner as possible and hoped that he wouldnt see them.

He pulled up to their car and, without checking, proceeded to crank the wheel and shut the door. They said the worker had a radio on and Led zeppelin was playing. Just as the door fully shut the last piece they heard was "it's gonna be a lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely tiiiiiime!!!" and the wheel cranked down locking them inside.

Once they recovered from the shock and realized the severity of their situation it was too late. They banged and screamed and the worker was well out of earshot.

They said they were stuck in there for 3 days. Had a 1/2 gallon of water between the two of them and had resorted to making a ghetto " piss distillation system"

Finally they caught a workers attention in the yard in BC and he let them out and laughed him ass off at them.

Could be true.. could be a tall tale. They were cool folk tho.

 

[BoneDaddy]

Well, on or about 1972, I think it was in Everett, Washington, I was sleeping in boxcar. If it was not Everett, it was a humping yard nearby. I woke up once I realized what was going on. I jumped through the open door and maybe about he time I hit the ground, the door slammed shut. Two Yard workers saw this, maybe less than 15 feet away. Very true story from my youth. Coming from the East Coast, I got off earlier in Seattle. Maybe something like the Salvation Army was providing coffee to people like me , walking from the nearby tracks. I was surprised that Seattle seemed such a run-down grimy city city then. There was a space needle , though.