This has been a sad summer (2012) of watching the Union Pacific prepare to swallow up the Southern Pacific. Already some magnificent trackage is doomed. In May I said

"The Santa Fe has a reputation for speed." That phrase from a business article rings true. The BNSF habitually attaches a great many units to its freights, so that they

After many years of solo riding, I was bringing along someone else for the first time — a coworker who had expressed an interest in riding freights. We rendezvoused at

I'd bought a discounted round-trip Greyhound ticket to Salt Lake, my jumping-off point.  I looked through the bus window and saw a hobo emerging from the UP yards, so I

Bruce came by, with plans that lifted me out of my post-injury depression. After committing sedition for a couple days, he was ready to head to the Northeast by

In another life I had time to ride freight trains around the West, through thousands of miles of scenery that only freight crews and hoboes had seen ever since

Ernest Hemingway hopping a freight train between boxcars to get to Walloon Lake in  1916. (Wikipedia Commons) After 17 months — too long a time — I was back sticking

For three days in 2003 I had relentlessly pushed a rental car through the splendors of western Colorado, what they call the West Slope. Now that I involuntarily live

After six years, I saw the Colorado outlaw known as TTK again in Fort Collins, Colorado. I'd slept behind a maintenance building and gave him a call that morning.