I have commited a railfan sin.....but I had no choice

Trains Magazine Passenger
1

I was slightly intioxicated and out of cash and had top get home to Bingahmton NY from Scranton PA. I was siting with a group of railfans in Taylor PA and what you know a train pulls up to the railfan hot spot,I dont know what got in to me but there was a open boxcar and a crawled right in and woke up in binghamton ny.

I do remember a few things like…Wow check out that concrete contruction of these massive bridges and wow what a grade we are climbing to get out of town what a great tunnels…You dont have to go way out west to get great moutain railroading…I dont recomend it to other people and know you can get killed but I could not wait for legal passenger service in my lifetime and I promise that I wont do it again…[:'(]…now I will take the wrath of the barrage of armchair railfans who live with mom in the basement…who will never get the chance to see what a i saw…THE HONESDALE STATION FROM A TRAIN!!!

2

Well, I cannot post about some of the things I did as a young man because the topic is forbidden. And besides it is foolish, illegal and worst of all extremely dangerous. No one should ever try it.

3

When did you do the ride, Bonas? Honesdale Station is not on the line to Bingahmton…it is infact on a dead end of a former Erie Wyoming Div. line from Lackawaxen. And it’s been a while that you could see many of the stations to Binghamton, too. Just a couple of abandoned and badly deteriorated shells of a a few the the concrete stations are extant. Hallstead is brick and the only restored station on the line…and now that I think of it, it may be the one you are referring to instead of Honesdale…

4

I could rightfully be charged with piling on with this posting, but you could have easily been killed or at least badly injured by pulling such a stunt. Your descriptions suggest that you were more than slightly intoxicated, which makes the stunt you pulled that much more dangerous. As other posts have indicated, it is quite unlikely that you saw what you claim to have seen. This is definitely a situation in which a special agent would have done you a favor by arresting you and having you charged as appropriate.

5

I don’t intend to “pile on” Bonas. I’ve done just what he did, more than once, while I was sober. I understand exactly what he did and why he did it.

But I don’t suggest for one minute that either he or I made a wise decision. We might have killed ourselves.

6

I can see that this can and probably will get out of control. That and the fact that it concerns an illegal act is more than ample justification to lock it.