Hey everybody tell me about your strangest railfaning experience. I don’t have a good one but I am sure someone out there does.
I really dont have a good one either. But the closest I could get was when I pulled over to shoot a trio of UP desiels that were either brand new or just thru the wash rack. They were moving slowly towards a stop. So I waited.
They finally stopped and I took the shot and upon mounting the cab I realized that there were about 6 other folks also shooting. I did not think there was any traffic on that remote stretch of interstate that time of day.
They all took thier shots and went thier seperate ways. The patient engineer would toot once for every shot taken.
It is not too strange of a experience but close enough.
I was in Montreal in 1990 and I took a picture of CP C-424 4212 pulling some cars. The next picture I took one hour later was in Longueuil of CN GP9 4212 pulling some cars.
Sometimes, I think all my railfanning experiences are strange![;)]
Seriously, I haven’t had too many strange railfanning experiences. It’s always interesting to watch the people on the Zephyr go by. Sometimes I’ll be out in snowy, foggy weather that gets the people looking at me a little oddly. Other times I’ll have the 500mm f4.5 mounted on the camera, and people generally look at that and point. The freight crews seem used to this, and just attribute it to another “foamer.” The passengers on Amtrak haven’t heard of us yet, and you can tell its a bit of a curiosity to them.
So far, nothing truly strange has happened, though. I’m not sure if I want it to, or not, either. Strange can be frightening at times, but it can also be really interesting, too. I guess I’ll just keep trying, and see what happens.
BTW, congrats on the second star, Emma.
Some old guy and a younger girl sliding down the side of the loop’s west fill on their butts at Tehachapi, after they realized the nice big train they were watching was going to eventually end up on the same track they were standing next to, and there wasn’t enough time to walk back.
Another contender might be the time I watched some lunatic play chicken with Metrolink trains at the Burbank Station for an hour, by jumping out in front of each one that came by, and seemingly nobody caring whether he did this or not. Then after he left, I walked up and sat down on one of the benches, and a security guard showed up 30 seconds later and told me a couldn’t just sit at the station.
Things that make you go hmmm.
Dave
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The night I met a hobo sleeping on the photo pavilion floor in Flatonia.
mike
The night I was railfanning the C&NW at Belton Jct in West Allis WI
I lived in an apartment near the tracks and would railfan at night – out in a field, very little light. I sat on a battery box and waited for trains (had no scanner then). Looked down and there was a really beautiful black and white hat next to the battery box so I leaned over to pick it up.
It was a skunk.
Or the time Trains ran an editorial that said we spend too much time photographing and not enough time railfanning so next time you go out railfanning, leave the camera behind. So that made sense to me. Went out to railfan – saw a train with CNW Huron District Alcos dead in tow presumably to scrapping in Chicago!
Dave Nelson
The strangest railfaning experience happened about two years ago when I was walking along the NS mainline in West Conshohocken, PA. I saw at least 30 guys on quads and ATVs riding along the tracks. That was very interesting. I didn’t say anything to any of them but, I kinda wanted to. However, I figured that if they get hit or in trouble that’s on them. Then after seeing the guys I saw two flag unit AC44CW’s UP pulling a loaded coal drag. That was something you don’t see every day on over here in the greater Philadelphia area. The crew also waved to me 
hehehehe
This started as a railfanning experience, but didn’t wind up as one–it was 25 or more years ago.
My wife and I were having dinner at our favorite trackside restaurant in Elmhurst. As a westbound freight train was slowly moving through, we noticed a couple of boys who were hopping on and jumping off the freight (we could see this about a block away). As these kids got on the train one time, the hind end cleared the yard, and the train began to accelerate. At this point those kids probably made the wisest decision by electing not to jump. I went to the restarant’s pay phone and called the Proviso general yardmaster and told him about this. He notified the dispatcher, who had the train stopped in Glen Ellyn, about five miles away. The two boys willingly got off the train there, ably assisted by members of the local police force.
Funny.
My strangest expeirence was propably when I saw children from a school in Down Town Glen Ellyn walking on the streets of Glen ellyn. This was their last day of school, but when the gates went down for a strange train carrying a special patched CNW unit, 3 UPY’s, and an SD70, the children kept going, and the parents were telling them to run. I was scared out of my mind. I was eating lunch in Einstein Bagles on Main Street.
I was with another US fan in Vienna, Austria in the mid 60s. He had been corresponding with another fan in Brno Czeckoslovakia and we made a one day trip thru the iron curtain to visit him. He and his wife put on a nice lunch and we went down to the station to watch trains. Some official in severe looking uniform came up and questioned. us. Our friend defused the situation by telling the authority figure we were Russian tourists and could not speak Czeck.
I guess - the Sunday afternoon in 1977 or '78 when a Seaboard Coastline switch crew dumped a C&NW boxcar over a derail in Greenwood, S.C. on literally the last switching move of the day. We missed the accident itself as we had jumped ahead to where they were supposed to tie up for the afternoon and then wondered what was keeping the SCL GP-7 or -9. We backtracked to find a very long-faced crew with an upside down boxcar down an embankment. Guess what - derails WORK! We were railfanning from Clemson University at the time…
Maybe this would classify as a pre-railfan experience. In junior high, our school bus had to wait for a long time one morning at a crossing near the school. It turns out, a train had hit a truck full of apples. There were apples all over. The police were trying to keep all the kids from the school away, but nearly every kid was picking up apples. The next day, a fair amount of students were home sick from eating apples with diesel fuel from the truck on them