The last great adventure
The history and future of modern day train-hopping
MELISSA HIEBERT STAFF
“You wouldn’t think I was a train-hopper by looking at my fingernails,” said Rodney, rotating his wrist to face his palm to the ground. “Most train-hoppers have dirt under their nails that takes a long time to wash out.”
Rodney Graham is a 51-year-old resident of Winnipeg who, after spending over 15 years writing about social issues for various street papers all across Canada, met some train-hopping squeegee kids, or rather, modern-day hobos. Deciding to check it out for himself, he first train-hopped from Jasper to Vancouver in 2004, and has been hooked ever since.
While there are a small number of “recreational” train-hoppers, the majority of rail-riders are transients. “In the States, they still use the term ‘hobo’ . . . there’s still a lot of traditional hobos in the States,” said Graham. “In Canada, most train-hoppers are in their mid-20s.” Graham said that in Canada in particular most train-hoppers are transient and homeless youth. He also said that in the ’80s and the mid-’90s, there were a lot of squeegee kids who train-hopped, but he has found that the number has decreased slightly in the last decade.
Nonetheless, train-hopping remains of interest to a number of alternative photographers and filmmakers, who have made efforts to document modern day train-hoppers and transient youth, including underground documentaries like the 2003 film, Catching Out. Even the New York Times printed an article on the subject in 1998, entitled “A Different Breed Of Freight-Hoppers,” discussing modern day train-hoppers. (The subheadline read “REAL hobos don’t use cellular phones.”)
Also, in keeping with the roots of the train-hopping tradition, a PBS documentary entitled Riding the Rails, documents youth rail-riders in the time of the Great Depression, who numbered around a quarter of a million.
“They hit the road because they wanted adventure, wanted to see ‘the big wide world’ out there,” the documentary begins. “Or, to escape unhappiness at home. Or, as one of them painfully recalls in our film, because a destitute father with too many mouths to feed told him he had to go.” Over 70 years have passed, and the reasons for train-hopping youth remain largely the same.
“The less fortunate ones can travel this way, and they can afford it,” said Graham. “With these young train- hoppers, they tend to live for the moment, day-to-day, and that’s kind of an appeal, too.”
“It borderlines on an obsession with me, personally,” said Graham, on why he writes about modern day hobos, or “the wanderers” as he affectionately calls them. “Because I’ve done it myself, and I’ve met these very interesting people. It is so different, and adventurous, and it’s very exciting.”
“I think I would prefer to train-hop to Saskatoon than go sky-diving,” he said, his being the best authority on the subject of comparable adrenaline, having been a smoke-jumper (part of an initial parachute-in response team for forest fires) in British Columbia for the Ministry of Forests for 10 years.
Graham, having train-hopped all over Canada, (including one non-stop, cross-country trip from Jasper to Toronto), offered some important pointers for would-be train-hoppers:
“Water is the main thing people never take enough of,” he said, knowing full well the consequences of not taking enough water. On his trip to Toronto he didn’t have enough water and eventually had to succumb to drinking ditch-water that was full of bacteria and left him with lung problems. Since then, he urges train-hoppers to take about 12 litres of water per person for a 12-hour ride.
Another pointer that Graham suggested was to try snagging a crew change manual before a long journey. “Crew change manuals will tell you when the crew change is, what part of town it’s in, if a train is east-bound or west-bound,” he said, explaining that the best place to look for the guides are through local “anarchist” groups.
“Train-hopping is not good for you if you are impatient,” Graham warns. “It isn’t easy. Sometimes you spend hours and hours waiting in the bush.” Graham himself said that he once spent 24 hours hiding in a bush in Montreal waiting to catch off.
However, train-hopping is not all adventure and glamour, and at times can be dangerous or deadly.
According to Operation Lifesaver, a national public education program to help prevent rail-related injuries or fatalities, there were 91 “trespasser incidents” in Canada in 2006, involving 27 serious injuries and 58 fatalities.
The numbers are much higher in the United States. According to the Office of Safety Analysis at the Federal Railroad Administration, there were a reported 990 injuries and deaths in the same year.
Graham said that he has known some kids personally who have lost legs and feet. One girl, he remembered, had her foot severed in the Fort Rouge train yard in Winnipeg. “I ran into her boyfriend the next day,” recalled Graham. “The authorities called an ambulance, and they also gave them the maximum amounts of fines they could, this girl with her foot cut off, they gave her a fine.” Train-hoppers can be slapped with all kinds of fines ranging from trespassing to property damage to mischief, which can cost hundreds of dollars apiece.
“[Train-hopping] is very dangerous. In fact, I don’t recommend it to people,” warned Graham. “If you can get a bus ticket, I would recommend that.” But he also added, “The chances of getting killed are slim, if you are careful.”
So, when asked why he himself, personally, Rodney Graham, with a few missing front teeth and bad lungs, donning a wide-brimmed, tan Tilley hat, chooses to continue train-hopping, despite the endless hours of hiding, waiting, the personal discomfort, fines, and looming threats of injury and death, what did he answer? While staring at his hands, envisioning the next time the inescapable mud and soot will become tellingly caked underneath his fingernails, he declared, “It’s the last great adventure.”
It’s hard to disagree. One only has to imagine staring out the partially opened door of a boxcar, the metal doorframe enportraiting the landscape as it whizzes by — a memory left in the past, the excitement of the future laying comforting, ominous or unknown, at the end of the tracks.
And when every chug of the engine kicks up dust clouds like the opening scene of a Steinbeck novel, one can almost see the grim, creased faces of labourers, immigrants and wanderers on the move, to nowhere in particular, but everywhere, searching for a place to be.
The whistle on the wind calls forth memories and visions of new experiences to come, juxtaposing the past and present; images of bindle stiffs and squeegee buckets; of tired, migrant faces and dingy dreadlocks; cans of beans, fields of wheat, cell phones and cyber space; of young and old, always moving, always seeking,
Rolling on, down a track that cuts through the field like a reminiscent bullet through the panoramic scenery of time.
Rolling on, into the changing seasons and the rise and fall of the sun in the sage and eternal sky,
Rolling on,
And on,
And on . . .
click here to see - The 10 commandments of train-hopping
click here to see - Train-hopping lingo
