How To Start Hopping Freight Trains
tl;dr Hitchhiking or other types of vagabond travel will eventually lead you to trainhopping. You should find someone to show you the ropes in-person. Once you start hopping trains, do so safely, and in a way that doesn't compromise the culture of trainhopping for the rest of us.
This is an X-post from r/trainhopping
I bet I can guess your story. You're between 14 and 40 years old, you've always been a little different, you live in either North America or Europe, and you want something more out of life. You are a student or you work for an hourly wage, or you're unemployed. You might live at your parents' place or else you have an apartment. Maybe you've been crashing on friends' couches here and there, just getting by.
You've heard about this mythical way of being. You learned about the Dustbowl Era Hobos who rode the rails in search of farm work, and you were surprised and intrigued to find out that hopping freight trains is still something people do. You've looked up videos and seen the grimy smiling faces of white kids riding through pristine wilderness on huge steel trains.
You've entertained the idea of quitting your repetitive life in favor of adventure and travel. You figure you're pretty smart and you like the idea of being outside. The freedom and excitement of living as a vagabond and stealing rides from huge industrial freight trains are hugely attractive to you. Even if only for a couple of months, or maybe just over the summer, you'd give up a lot to be able to experience this.
Your posts on this sub and others have been met mostly with hostility, or completely ignored. "Go do your own research" they say. "No one is going to spoon-feed you this information."
I agree that the internet is not the place to learn how to ride freight. I do believe, however, that I can at least give you a chance to learn how to learn how to ride freight. I'm going to write from my own experience here. I expect this to be entertaining and anecdotal. Many of the things I'm about to describe are illegal, and certainly dangerous. Do this at your own risk.
Step 1: LEAVE
Let me ask you a question. What would you do if I kidnapped you, blindfolded you, took away your smartphone and your wallet, and then dropped you off somewhere without telling you where you were? What would you do? How would you find out where you are? Where would you sleep? How would you get back to wherever it is you wanted to be?
All of that sounds unlikely, but that exact situation is one that you are almost definitely going to find yourself in, if you decide to do this stupid, crazy thing. Luckily, you won't have been kidnapped. You will have gotten there slowly, learning how to make your way the entire time.
You need skills. You need to learn how to be resourceful, how to make something out of nothing. You need to learn how to get information out of people. Not the internet, not your phone, real people.
Complete strangers are going to be your first and best source of information and help. If you're an anti-social reddit dweller, that might sound scary. It's actually not that hard though. Walking up and talking to someone is pretty easy when you're hungry or lost or desperate. You practice a little and you get good at it, just like tennis or guitar or Team Rocket League or masturbating.
So, how do you learn all of this? How do you figure out what kind of gear you need and how to get around and how to deal with living outside and how to be self-reliant? There's one very easy way, and it's the path that pretty-much every trainhopper I've met has taken in some form or another:
Hitchhiking.
Before you're ready to sit in a highly-controlled train yard for eight hours waiting for a train, you might want to survive standing on a public freeway for 30 minutes waiting for a kind motorist to stop and pick you up.
Hitchhiking is decidedly easier than trainhopping. It's usually faster, it's more legal and more safe and more comfortable. If you've never done any of this before, I promise it will scratch most of the itch that you've got for travel and adventure.
Again, I can't spoon-feed you these skills, but I can give you long, detailed posts about how I would do it. Click some of the links below and start going your homework:
After you've read up on that, give yourself a deadline or a start date. If you haven't already,graduate High School. Tell your family and friends that you're going on a travel adventure to find yourself. Get some minimal gear, drop out of college or quit your job, and leave.
I can almost guarantee that you will meet amazing, inspiring, interesting, funny, kind, creative people. Some people who end up giving you rides will likely end up feeding you, giving you money, lecturing you, telling you about Jesus, giving you places to stay, giving you advice, whatever. A very small percentage of the people who pick you up might be sexually weird toward you, but it's much-less common than the media would have you believe.
Don't hitchhike at night.
Don't get in the car if you get a weird vibe.
Do respect police and say "Okay." when they tell you not to hitchhike or walk in a certain area. A cop rolling up on you when you're on-foot and alone can be intimidating. Look them in the eye, be honest, try to relate to them as a human, and don't say more then you need to. I've had times where I was on the interstate hitch hiking illegally and my interaction with a police officer ended up lasting 30 seconds. I've even had times where police end up giving me a ride and letting me off at the county line.
This first step, leaving, is the easiest and the hardest. Whether or not you are able to actually take the plunge into traveler life is what separates the wannabees from the seasoned veterans. After you first step out, it's only a matter of time.
Step 2: MAKE FRIENDS
So you've been on the road for a few months. You've traveled hundreds or thousands of miles from your home. You've learned a lot. You've had some close calls, some frustrations, some victories, some realizations about yourself and about life. You're not intimidated by not knowing where your next meal's coming from, or where you're going to sleep tonight.
Now it's time to find some Dirty Kids.
As a traveler, you have access to many different sections of society. You should be able to interact on equal footing with most members of a homeless community. You should be realizing by now that vagabonds, both travelers like yourself, and homebums, are useful. You can sit down next to an old timer or a dude with dreads and no shoes, share a cigarette, ask some questions, have a friendly, real conversation, and come out of it with at least some sort of reliable information.
You started this journey wanting to hop a train. Now start asking around about where to hop a train. Run into enough tweakers and panhandlers and hitchhikers, and eventually you'll get Lucky.
Someone will know about a freight yard in the next town over. Some girl will say "yeah, my ex-boyfriend was like a crust punk or whatever." Maybe you'll just run into an actual train hopper at the right place at the right time.
That is your goal. Meet someone who rides freight. It might be a 40-year-old black guy who won't even talk to you unless you buy him a bottle of liquor. It might be a smelly, fat oogle kid with a broken harmonica who's two years younger than you but acts like he knows everything. It might be a badass babe with a trumpet and a dog and limp. The demographic isn't exactly consistent. You just need someone to show you the ropes. Really the only criteria is their having experience.
Once you meet an honest-to-God freight train rider, befriend them. Put your ego aside. Be a homie. Pitch on beer, share food, work on spanging or busking together. You and this person have some shared experience and you're in it together. It should be relatively easy and rewarding, getting to know them.
After meeting one, you'll probably meet others. The first trainhopper you meet might not be "the one" person who's destined to take you on your first ride. Remember that attempting to catch out with someone means you must trust each other. Once you get on a train with somebody, you're stuck with them in an enclosed space until the train stops, which can sometimes take a very long time.
You might find a group of Kids with their backpacks and their habits. Get them to take you in. Contribute. Be nice, but don't get taken advantage of. Some riders have a weird complex here they feel the need to haze inexperienced riders. That's not the rule. Unless you're an asshole, you should be able to find someone nice. If you are an asshole, find some other assholes, gain their respect, and hop a fucking train already.
Step 3: LEARN THE CULTURE, LEARN THE WAYS
Have you ever heard of a Crew Change Guide? The internet has a weird relationship with this fabled trainhopper manual, mostly because it's one of the few documents that you can't actually find on the internet. Once you've traveled on your own and then found some people who also travel, the CCG will come to you.
There's some kind of weird voodoo around it. I hopped my first couple of trains before I even got a copy of the CCG. That seems to be the way that most others have gone also. Even though TrD's information in the Guide is extremely detailed, it still only gives you a rough sketch of how to actually get your ass onboard a moving freight train. The timing, the exact location, the identification of the train, all of it is up to you to figure out. Often, the information listed for a given city is outdated anyway, and the only real useful part is the general location of the actual freight yard.
As far as information you can find online, checkout the sidebar here at r/vagabond. Most of this stuff has already been said by u/huckstah. Another good resource is squattheplanet.com
I wrote two guides on trainhopping that you're meant to read after checking this one.
How To Safely Hop Freight Trains
Beyond that, there are certain unspoken rules around trainhopping. There is a lot of concern, especially recently, around keeping people from "blowing up the spot." This refers to any activity draws unwanted attention to an area. Usually, people are talking about jungles (which are semi-permanent hobo camps near train yards where hobos wait for trains.) Examples of blowing up a spot might include:
-Leaving trash
-Making a lot of noise
-Starting unwanted fires
-Shining lights in peoples' faces
-Giving away everyone's position by using a light at a bad time
-Telling irresponsible people about the location of a hop out
-Bringing unwanted people to a hop out
-Getting the cops called on yourself or others
-Calling the cops.
-Injuring yourself or others so badly that someone has to call an ambulance
-Getting in fights
-Having a dog that barks a lot
-Having a dog that pisses or shits somewhere it shouldn't
-Getting too high or drunk
You get the idea. Don't do anything blatantly illegal in view of the public, don't do anything stupid around people who are just trying to catch out. The community tends to police itself. You've been warned.
Many, travelers take on nicknames or road names. Some kids just go by their first name. I think I've met three people called Nasty Nate. When I was in New Orleans, there were at least two people named Trash there at the same time. I told an older rider about my friend's idea of calling himself "Shadow" and he laughed. "I think I know a Shadow in every major city."
Besides that, train hopper culture is kind of yours to figure out. It's hard to really exactly nail down in words. There are a few articles and documentaries available to the public, but they rarely capture what it's really like to sit on your pack against a tree or under a bridge and wait for a train with a group of Dirty Kids. If you want that sense of camaraderie, that belonging to a group of real-ass, tough, down-to-earth people, you're just going to have to get out there.
Riding freight is a really special, underground, subversive thing. It's dangerous and stupid and illegal, but it also brings one of the greatest senses of freedom that a person can get. Of all the drugs I've tried, hopping a train gives the biggest rush. Before lighting out, I kind of expected a harrowing solo adventure. In reality, my time hopping freight trains in the US has introduced me to some of my closest friends: wild, flawed, beautiful people, many of whom I expect to know for life.
Comment or PM with questions.
Good Luck out there.
Peaceably,
-Tall Sam Jones
Posted Apr 26, 2018, 10:23 PM UTC · edited