Hobo Slang and The Anatomy of Trains and Rail Yards

-The Anatomy of Trains and Railyards-

I’m throwing around a lot of lingo in How To Start Hopping Freight Trains and How To Safely Hop Freight Trains, so I’m going to list some common terms and types of yards here. See u/huckstah’s guide on hobo lingo from the sidebar for tl;dr on some of these.

**Note:**This information is highly-generalized and standardized for North America. If you want to learn more detail about railroad equipment, there are entire internet communities out there dedicated to nerding out about trains. Railfans or "foamers" are train enthusiasts, and some of them can be really helpful for learning about trains. Even model train builders and their websites can be very knowledgeable about trains and equipment. Be aware, however, that some foamers dislike train hoppers, and will call the police if they spot you out in the real world.

Rail Yard Railroad Switching yards are complex arrangements of parallel lengths of track where trains are built. They can be huge (the biggest yard in North America is North Platte, Nebraska which is over 6 miles long) and ridiculously complex. The Wikipedia article on rail yards does a better job of explaining them than I could.

Yards often have fences around them. These are to keep you out. Once you set foot on railroad property, you are trespassing.

Ballast is crushed stone that provides stable ground for railroad tracks. Ballast is intentionally irregular and sharp, do allow the rocks to compact and for drainage. The stuff is notoriously difficult to walk on, and it's pretty noisy, especially if you've got big heavy boots on.

Jungle/Hop Out is the term for a hobo camp on the outskirts of a yard. Jungle specifically refers to the place where tramps eat and sleep and hang out while waiting for a train, while a Hop Out can be a more-specific spot where one waits immediately before approaching the train.

Jungles are so-called partially because they’re often located in areas that are hidden by trees and bushes. Jungles and Hop Outs can often be identified by train hopper tags, discarded gear and clothes, beat-up old furniture, broken bottles, crushed beer cans, used needles, and trash.

Names for Riders People who ride freight trains can be called one or more of the following:

-Rider

-Tramp

-Hobo

-Rail Bum

-Dirty Kid

-Crust Punk

-Crust Lord

-Greenhorn (for inexperienced or new riders)

-Oogle (for people who blow up the spot)

Home Bum is the term that travelers use for homeless people who are staying in one area with no intention of leaving any time soon. If a traveler stops traveling for a while, but doesn’t get a job or move into a conventional living situation, they might be said to be “home bumming it” in a city. Home bums will sometimes hang around jungles

Tags: Graffiti is an important part of trainhopping culture. Back in the 30’s, hobo tags were often left as one of the only ways of sharing information about a town or hop out. They were coded symbols, and included messages about nice “cat ladies” who would serve food, places where the cops were mean or where pan handling might profit, even warnings about the local jail house having bugs.

Tags today are mostly meant to be recognized by others to identify them by. If I see my buddy FI$H’s tag somewhere under a bridge with 4/18 or just ‘18 next to it, I know that I may only be a couple weeks behind him.

Check out r/bombing for some really cool tags. Not all are from trainhoppers, but they’re interesting either way.

Moniker is a type of tag that’s done quickly, usually with a paint pen or sharpie (instead of spray paint) and is usually seen on an actual rail car. A moniker usually has a unique cartoon or piece of art, sometimes a meaningful or humorous phrase, and the name of the tramp who left it. r/monikers has some good stuff, if you want to get more into train hopping culture.

Bull Railroad police are called Railcops, Bulls. There are lots of horror stories about them beating up train hoppers. These are mostly myths to scare away naive people who might get caught and blow up a given hop out. Your best option is to stay hidden, wait until dark, go with as little gear as possible, stay in the shadows, be quiet, practice stealth.

Railcops usually patrol in vehicles. Just like Highway Patrol, Sheriffs, or Municipal Police, they tend to be in Domestic brands (Ford, GMC, or Dodge) with emphasis on SUV's. Sometimes Bulls drive unmarked vehicles. Bull vehicles will not be heavy trucks with specialized equipment. Those are yard workers.

If you get spotted by a Bull, run away. Get out of the yard and disappear into the woods or the corn fields. There is a general impression that running from law-enforcement never works out in the US, but in this specific instance, you have a decent chance of escape. You can hop over strings of trains, hide in small, dark places, fit through holes in fences, change your clothes and stash your gear and appear outside of the yard as just a normal pedestrian. They drive loud, clumsy vehicles with bright lights and honestly they probably don't get paid enough to get all sweaty and scuffed up trying to chase your ass down.

If you do get caught by a Bull, or you get spotted and don't think you can escape, be friendly. Appear harmless. Keep your drugs and your weapons out of sight. Talk your way out of it. Sometimes you'll get a warning. Sometimes you'll get a ticket. Some railroads will take a picture of you and check it against pictures of repeat offenders. Specific towns are very anti-hobo, so there are places where you might get arrested for hopping freight, but those are rare and mostly in the mid-west.

Brakeman/Car Knocker Freight trains are still built and controlled by rugged humans, usually men. These people are at work. Their job is to safely build, load, break up, and unload trains. It's not their job to worry about your oogle-ass getting hurt or lost in their yard.

Pulling information tags off of trains, stealing or damaging railroad property, lighting fires, or doing anything else to delay trains or make rail workers' jobs harder is not okay.

Do not ruin this shit for the rest of us. When you hear rail workers coming, stay out of sight. If they don't know you're there, they don't have to report anything, and there's no risk of you getting in their way.

All of that being said, rail workers can sometimes be very friendly toward train hoppers some of them will turn a blind eye to you. Certain workers (especially those at departure yards) will have real-time access to train schedules. This is one of the only sure-fire ways to find out where a train is actually going. I've had workers give me information about trains, tips on when the Bulls patrol a certain area, and even nab a case of bottled water from the Railroad Office to give to me and my companions before our train left. Being friendly and honest can be a huge asset. Being drunk and mean and crazy confirms the fears that are out there about trainhoppers, and it likely to cause you problems.

Unit: A locomotive engine unit that controls a string of cars. Identified by bright colors and railroad company logo. Units have 6 or 8 axles instead of 4. Most units have cockpits with windows in the front and on either side. These will be loud, as they have 4-8 diesel engines inside. They're also equipped with a multi-phonic horn and a bell. You will usually see at least one and up to 5 or 6 units on the front of a train.

The lead unit at the very front of a train will be manned. There will usually be several Units pulling from the front. Units found in the middle or at the rear of the train are usually unmanned. Their power and breaking is controlled by the engineers in the lead car.

DPU stands for Distributed Power Unit. This means an engine unit that is controlled by engineers in the cockpit of a different unit. In other words, a DPU is a unit on a train that is uninhabited by engineers.

Car: There are many types of freight train cars, used to carry a wide variety of freight. I'll detail the common types that you'll see, later on below in this post. Most cars have 4 axles two on front, two on rear. Cars have air brakes, which use compressed air to stay open. The natural position of the brake pads is closed, so that if there is a mechanical failure and the air pressure drops, the brakes will close and bring the car to a stop. When a train is stopped and you hear a sudden hissing sound, it's likely the brakes "airing up" and opening. That means the train is likely to start moving very soon.

General Manifest/Junk: When the layman thinks of a string of rail cars, they usually think of what we call Junk. These are where the boxcars live. General Manifest (GM) can be long strings of the same car (often coal, grain, or oil tankers) or a wide verity of many different types of cars. Junk trains carry scrap steel, construction materials, lumber, automobiles, textiles, livestock, industrial chemicals, smaller railroad vehicles, giant spools of wire, and probably a hundred other types of freight that I can't name off the top of my head. Junk trains are generally slower and have lower priority (they will side-out and wait for other trains to pass more-often than the other way around.) The variety of cars sometimes makes for more places to hide.

Intermodal/Double Stack "IM's" Are much more standardized than GM's. They consist entirely of flat cars and well cars, which carry shipping containers, actual semi truck trailers (with the wheels still on) or are sometimes empty. Sometimes, containers will be stacked two-boxes-high, which is aptly called a Double Stack (DS.) IM's carry lighter freight (containers are often full of packaged consumer goods) and often go faster than GM's. Good IM rides can be hard to track down because the trains get "Hot Shotted" or cleared to blow through a rail yard without stopping. Managing to find an IM that's stopped and board it will often result in a long, steady ride.

Military Trains Sometimes the US Armed Forces commissions private rail companies to move equipment, vehicles, and ammunition. Just as a general rule, leave these trains the fuck alone. I once met an old timer who'd been riding for 20+ years who had a story about a train that was carrying combat vehicles. He said that it stopped and he tried to board it when several armed dudes "came out of nowhere" and pulled him off the train. Being a train hopper kind of makes you look like a terrorist sometimes. Don't tempt fate. These trains are few and far-between. Wait for the next one.

Knuckle: The coupling that links train cars to units and to each other is dangerous. Each car has one half of a coupler on front and rear. Then connected, they look like this (side view) and it interlocks the same way two human hands do when they're thumb wrestling. The knuckle is two big, heavy pieces of steel which connect two huge, massive train cars, and here's the dangerous part: they move around. There is a gap between the two halves of the knuckle that is big enough to fit your hand or your toe or your dog's leg. The knuckle is attached to the the car by a straight steel arm which also moves. If anything organic is caught between these moving parts, it can easily be crushed. Watch this video

Porches: Several types of cars have flat spaces where equipment can be mounted. When no equipment is mounted there, the space is available for you to ride on. Beware, however, because sometimes these porches are not "filled in" with solid metal, and instead only have a skeletal cross bar, resulting in a "suicide ride." If you see a car that you think will be a great ride, and then realize that it's a suicide, bail and find a different car.

Wells Intermodal well cars will sometimes be longer than they need to be. A 48' container might be loaded into a car that's built to carry a 53' container. This results in "deep wells," which can make excellent spaces for hiding and shelter. Again, these wells are sometimes suicide rides. Make sure that there is a solid floor before committing to a car.

Ladders and Walkways Every type of train car (except for box cars) and units should be boarded via a ladder that's designed for humans to grab onto and climb. The ladders are found near the four corners of the car. On most types of cars, climbing the side ladder will lead you to a walkway (the one in that picture is right on the front of the tanker, running from the port to the starboard side. There is one hand rail. If you need to get from one side of a stopped string to another, use the ladder to get up, shimmy over the walkway, and then climb down the ladder on the other side. DO NOT STAND ON THE GROUND BETWEEN TWO CARS. DO NOT CLIMB OVER THE KNUCKLE.

Slack Action: As mentioned above, there is some leeway between train cars. There are a few inches of space between one car and the next. Given how heavy train cars are, how powerful units are, and how many cars there are in some trains, those few inches can accumulate and create a deadly whiplash effect. If the train is stopped, the cars will be compressed. When the train moves forward, the slack will be quickly taken up by each successive car. This Video gives an idea for how violent and powerful slack action can be.

Freddie: When there is no engine unit on the rear of a train, they put a flashing red light on her ass-end. This is called an End Of Train device, or a Flashing Freddie If you're in a yard where there are lots of inactive or out-of-service cars, any string that has a Freddie on the end is active and will likely be moving soon so be careful.

Types of Rideable Cars

-GM/Junk-

For more examples of most of these types of cars, check out this Railroad Equipment Index from CSX's website.

Gainers (More officially called "Covered Hoppers") Carry corn, wheat, barley, oats, sometimes sand, clay, or dry cement. They're big, often off-white, rectangular cars with cut outs on the front and rear. These cutouts make way for porches, which hold equipment that can be mounted to the car. Sometimes the porch is clear of equipment, making it available for you to ride in.

More and more cars are being put into service without porches, which results in a suicide ride or a no ride. They look like this There are no fins, no sides, just a ladder and a tank.

A grainer with a porch will look like this from the outside. Notice how there are little metal lips bordering the porches, and vertical fins running diagonally from the porch to the top of the car. View of grainer porch from on-board In-between the two big steel fins will usually be a hole about 3' in diameter where you can hide your gear and yourself.

For more clarity, here are two grainers side-by-side. The car on the left is a suicide, the car on the right should have a porch. That little 8-inch lip running from the ladder to the tank is what you're looking for.

Cadillac/Grainers Also called "Canadian Grainers" and "Double Barrels", these are special types of grainers that are especially coveted by riders for the shelter and hiding places they provide. The internet doesn't know what the fuck I'm talking about when I try to image search "Cadillac Grainer" so I'm going to leave it up to you to figure out on your own. They have two holes on the back, side-by-side, instead of one in the center.

Gondolas are big open tubs that carry rebar, scrap steel, I-beams, heavy types of freight that don't need particularly lush accommodations. Empty gondolas offer good hiding spots and fair shelter. Loaded gondolas should generally be avoided. The violent shunting action that train cars experience can cause heavy-ass freight to shift and crush you.

Hoppers carry coal, metal ores, grain, track ballast (thick-ass gravel) and are similar to gainers in their structure and the position of their porches. You can climb up and ride inside the hopper under certain circumstances.

Box Cars are the stereotypical hobo ride. They carry a very wide verity of freight, they're literally just giant boxes for carrying stuff around in. Because one cannot use the ladders to board, and must instead jump from the ground up onto the floor of the car, they're one of the hardest types of cars to physically board. Sometimes empty box cars have one or both doors open.

Box cars offer decent shelter and cover, but you have to know where to hide. If you're inside the boxcar and only one door is open, stand on the same side as the open door, as close to the wall as possible, and as far back into the corner as you can get. Anyone walking by can easily see about 95% of the interior of the car, but there's a sliver of cover up against that wall where you can hide until you leave the yard.

Aside from the normal risks associated with riding these cars, there is an added chance of getting trapped inside the car itself. If you're on one of these cars, you found a door that was already open. There is a slight chance of these open doors coming loose and slamming shut. Conventional hobo wisdom says to take a rail spike, which can be found laying around most yards, and jam it in the door rail to prevent it from closing.

Again, only ride these cars if they are empty. There are confirmed cases of people being crushed to death by shifting or falling freight inside of boxcars.

Reefer Box Cars Are usually carrying food, and seem to be locked more often than not. They do have a pretty handy ride on the exterior, however. The refrigerator unit itself sometimes has a steel enclosure around it or a small porch that can sometimes be ridden. This is one of the very few heated rides that you'll find, as the exhaust from the refrigerator unit pumps heat directly down onto where you'd be laying if you were riding.

Lumber Racks are a non-ideal option for riding, but can be useful in a pinch, if empty.

Auto Racks carry highway cars to distribution centers, where they're dolled out to dealerships. The racks are sometimes confused with cattle cars. I've heard paranoid tweakers say that they're FEMA camp human haulers. In any case, you can ride inside of them. The doors are on the front/back of the car (rather than the side) and they're a little tricky to figure out at first. If they're empty, they should be unlocked.

Loaded Auto racks will obviously have cars inside of them. The locks are basically temporary tags that are too strong to break by hand, but that you should be able to break with a pair of pliers. I've heard stories about the cars being unlocked and even having keys in them. One Dirty Kid in Illinois claimed to have gotten inside a Honda, started the engine, accessed the radio and navigation system, and turned on the heater. For the record, don't fucking break into auto racks, it causes problems for the railroads and makes it harder for all of us to ride.

Caboose cars are a relic of past times when trains were slower and more manpower was requires to run them. Back in the day, before remote switching, a train would pass by a junction (place where two tracks meet) and would have to stop to let a brakeman get out and manually switch the track back to how it was before they got there. The caboose was at the rear end of the train because the entire train had to pass the junction before the track could be switched back.

Unlike most cars on this list, cabooses were designed to be inhabited by humans. They had beds, chairs, bathrooms, cooking amenities, stoves or heaters for cabin warmth, desks, and radio equipment. While it's very rare to see a caboose in-service today (they are still used on smaller railroads), dilapidated old out-of-service cabooses can be found in some yards, and can offer temporary shelter to hobos.

-Intermodal-

Flat Cars are pretty self explanatory. They are basically a flat deck with no sides that freight (often including vehicles) can be loaded onto. This provides a very sketchy, dangerous ride with little to no chance of hiding.

Bulkhead:(Shown here next to a Boxcar and in front of a Grainer) A Flat Car with walls on front and rear of the car. Slightly more safety, cover, and stealth, but still not a great option.

Well Cars/Deep Wells: These are bread-and-butter for IM's as they carry Intermodal Containers. Wells can be ridden empty. Most wells are equipped for 53' containers, but can carry shorter loads. The difference will sometimes result in a rideable space referred to as a Deep Well. Sometimes, a special "Overhang" setup will be created when a full 53' container is loaded on top of a 40' container or two 24' containers. The result is a Deep Well that is covered from above for improved shelter.

Double Stack cars are Well Cars with two shipping containers stacked on top of each other. These usually won't have well access, unless they're in an Overhang setup, but they will have shallow porches on front and back. Like grainers, sometimes these porches are a suicide, which you don't want. Well cars with ridges or "spines" on the side are usually unsuitable for riding, while cars with flat or "smooth" sides more-often have solid porches.

Remember:

Spine side = Suicide

Piggyback is the slang term for a semi-truck trailer carried on the back of a flat car. There are reports of these trailers sometimes being carried in deep wells, which would result in a well-hidden ride. Piggybacks keep you out of the rain, but it’s not easy to hide, unless you get between the wheels of the trailer.

Pigs With Wings are Piggybacks on flat cars with one important addition. In the past 15 years, many trucking companies have added aerodynamic wings to the undersides of their trailers. These leave only a few inches of space between the trailer and the car, making for better shelter and a better hide.

Units

When it comes to comfort, shelter, and easily-boardable hardware, engine units belong in their own category. Firstly, the ladders on the outside of a unit are fully-enclosed steps as opposed to being just a sketchy ladder. There are walkways that run along both sides and the back. The cabin is entered from the rear. There is a door on either side, and only one is usually active. On Union Pacific trains, it’s the right side, or the starboard side. Some units also have a nose door, which is accessed by a ladder near the front, and a walkway that runs from port to starboard. If the rear door is locked, the nose door might be open, and vice-versa.

Once inside, DON’T TOUCH THE CONTROLS. Put your gear on the floor, and stay hidden until you’re out of the yard. Your job is to ride inside without anyone knowing you were there. You can look at the gauges to see how fast the train is going and everything, you can look at the controls to see how it all works, you can sit in the chairs, but keep your grimey mitts off of those levers and buttons. I once saw a tramp hit the “HORN” button just for fun, which then activated the bell, which ran continuously and didn’t stop. We ended up hopping off the unit while it was still moving, outside of the yard, before the bell could attract any attention.

There are certain amenities that you can access inside the cab. There is a bathroom (though the toilets don’t always work.) The windows open on hot days, and there is a heater that you can turn on during cold weather. All the units I’ve seen have a normal 3-prong power outlet that you can charge your phone on or whatever. Trains are also stocked with bottled water, in a little mini fridge. Try not to drink all of it, the engineers rely on there being water in every unit.

Some units have a camera inside. Some people are paranoid about this. I’ve ridden for hours on end in full view of that camera and never had any problems.

Non-rideable cars

Tankers have very little real-estate where one could ride. There is basically nowhere to hide, which is already a serious disadvantage, but beyond that, the only place to even sit is the walkway on either end and the access walkway on top. Both are “cheese grater” metal, built for maximum grip with boots, and not built with the comfort of you and your dog in mind.

These cars have zero shelter from wind or rain, and are generally considered useless for freight train hopping.

Also, this is unlikely, but in the event of a major derailment disaster, tankers often carry hazardous and/or flammable liquids. There have been derailments that have resulted in toxic poisonings of any living thing within 50 yards, as well as huge fiery cataclysms of grinding steel and explosions.

Coil Cars carry big coils of steel wire. There is very simply nowhere to ride on the exterior. I don’t know about riding inside if they are empty. I have heard hobos talk about being able to open coil cars and access the cargo compartment, but that is unconfirmed.

Feel free to ask questions and add anything that I’ve missed.

Good Luck out there.

Peacefully,

-Tall Sam Jones