Train hopping

Drifters.

Hopping freight train from La Crosse to Bay View (along the Mississipi river) near Milwaukee, with 43 year old Hobo named Stretch. ..Life of a Hobo nicknamed Stretch. Stretch was elected Hobo King in 2009, at the National Hobo convention. A Hobo is a term which is applied to a migratory worker or homeless vagabond, often penniless. Hobos move around the country, looking for work by hopping illegally on freight trains, which can be a dangerous enterprise. Modern freight trains are much…

I really, really want to be a train-hopping hobo. someday....

The first time Swampy hopped a freight train, he was 18. He was traveling north of his native California when he ran into a train-hopping friend in Portland, Oregon, who suggested they hitch a ride back down south. He was broke, so the idea was appealing. “It was pouring, and we were hiding under the […]

“Riding freight trains is the perfect crime; you get to break several laws without ruining anyone's day. Meanwhile you're experiencing something historically American, an activity people have been taking part in almost as long as freight trains have been rolling.

These images by Mike Brodie are haunting and nostalgic. A talented, self-taught photographer (he found his first camera left behind on a car seat), Mike left home when he was 17, got hooked on the…

“Riding freight trains is the perfect crime; you get to break several laws without ruining anyone's day. Meanwhile you're experiencing something historically American, an activity people have been taking part in almost as long as freight trains have been rolling.

Train

It was late summer in the southern hemisphere and I had been traveling in Australia for only two weeks when a friend told me about IronFest. Nothing sounded better to me than jousting, battle reenactments and blacksmithing in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney, so I was off. I bid my friends in