One person said that CN had always called cops on railfans.
I have never ever had any trouble at all with the CN. Local yard employees here, evern though its a small yard, have been EXTREMELY nice to me. I photo and video tape trains setting off and picking up all the time. The crews either don’t say anything or engage in friendly conversation.
I think the phenomenon of calling the cops is largely regional. Here in Indiana (no jokes please), from what I am told most rail employees in my area recognize the regular rail fans and are most friendly to them. However, when they see someone doing something unusual and/or do not recognize someone, they call the police.
Sadly, that is not an unusual practice in Indiana. Indiana license plates identify the county you are in. It is amazing how much more people get pulled over driving in counties away from their home county.
Gabe, that’s not an Indiana phenomenon, it’s almost universal. I’ve been pulled over out of state more than twice the number of times around home, even though the farther from home I am the more carefully I drive. Once I was doing about 70 on the Dan Ryan at 2am. I was being passed left and right, but who do they pull over? The guy from out of state, of course. They confiscated my licence and I had to follow them back to their precinct in the middle of Cicero, find someplace to park on the street, and pay $50 to get my licence back. Talk about tourist (railfan) friendly! It was a loooong time before I went back.
The consensus of the people I know in Illinois is that the Wisconsin cops pick on the Illinois drivers much more. What I think these “flatlanders” fail to realize is that the Illinois drivers are (on average) much more aggressive, tailgate, rapidly change lanes, and drive 15mph faster than their Wisconsin counterparts. Like, DUH, drive like that and you’re gonna get pulled over more.
I can’t speak about the midwest, but traffic cops in my county pay more attention to out of staters for a couple of reasons. Here they are:
Out of state plates indicate that who ever is driving probably is not familiar with local speed limits, insurance laws, or traffic controls. They tend to drive like the sightseers or vacationers many of them are… and get a little crazy.
In my neck of the woods, one of the highways is a drug pipeline from Florida to points north. Most drug runners are too smart to do something really dumb in front of a marked patrol car that gives me probable cause to stop them… but occassionally we get lucky. One of the key indicators of a drug runner is an out of state plate. (There are other indicators, too, which I won’t go into… but the plate is the most visible to a cop on patrol… and the quickest way to catch an ID without actually stopping someone.)
Half joking here… but when a cop does issue a ticket on an out of stater, chances are pretty good the violator will mail in the fine to skip court. My county clerks love this. So does the judge who sits in traffic court. A deputy I knew out in Arizona termed it best: “You know what they call out of state traffic stops?.. Revenue!”
Department policies vary on traffic tickets. Many police departments actually do have “quotas”, except that they are usually termed “performance objective evaluation criteria” or some other term that attempts to measure an officer’s performance. My department does not have a ticket quota… but many do.
Final hint on traffic tickets: It’s a really bad idea to pass a patrol car on a highway.
Also sounds like the more meek drivers in and around Washington, DC. When we moved to Mississippi I had to learn how to drive all over again - keeping the psycho road warrior locked in his box was difficult for the first 6 months.
I understand and empathize with Eric’s reasoning, but I hate being treated like a second-class citizen when I am out of state. When the cops get lucky and pull over a drug runner, please throw the book at them. But when they pull over a law-abiding citizen for doing 70 in a 65 because it would be unsafe to drive at 65 with all the locals doing 70, it makes me angry at the state. I still vow to get Missouri back for doing that to me. I got that ticket when I was 17, still have it saved, and when I find a way to do it, I will mail that ticket to them with an explanation. It is pretty bad when I get treated with more dignity and respect in a foreign country than Missouri (angry fist).
Back to railroading, I wonder how many engineers think they can spot a rail fan as opposed to someone who probably shouldn’t be there.
I speak for the Midwest, where I work the road. Its the same here as Erik said.
P.S. We don’t have quotas either, and I am speaking for the Iowa State Patrol as well as I personally know many of th