We're predominantly locomotive fans - not train fans - or so it would appear

Instead of looking at train photos - I looked at the latest 100 topics with posts on this forum. Yes, we are locomotive fans - but not predominantly so:

29% Locomotives
15% Operations
14% Railfanning
12% Passenger Trains
10% Equipment other than Locomotives
9% ROW/MOW
6% Other
3% Accidents

(standard statistical note - may not total to 100% due to rounding error)

dd

I have an exlectic interest in railroads…Locomotives, freight cars. passenger travel , operations… You name it i follow about 85 % of the listings in this forum.
One gripe I have about the locomotive photos is that many are taken with a
telephoto lens and the engines are squashed to about 1/4 their size, especially is
it is a consist with three, four or fine locos. Likewise the freight or passenger cars.

I am definitly a train fan not just a locomotive fan.I like to photograph both locomotives and railcars. About sixty percent of my photos and of locomotives and the rest are of different types of rairoad cars.I even used an entire roll of film on a group of old Great Northern and Northern Pacific freight cars in Bruster, WA last summer.

I think I am probably responsible for at least half of those “Equipment othern than Locomotives” topics.

And as Eric will attest, I’m a notorious freight-car freak, and my responses can be found in most of those threads.

Did somebody mention MMA 117? This car was built by Pullman Standard in 1979 for the Rock Island, and, prior to being lettered MMA, had been in the CNW 718000 series.

I, too, prefer the manifest trains for the variety of equipment that can be seen on them. But just when the coal, auto, or intermodal trains are about to become completely boring, something new (or relettered) will come along and make them exciting again.

These freight cars are the reason railfans are around today–they bring in the bucks, and provide a lot more than something for the locomotives to pull!

Two comments:

  1. My pet peeve is when someone chops or crops the rear of the train out of a 3/4 wedge shot ! I just really hate that!

  2. I used to hang around in order to get the “caboose shot”. EOT shots just aren’t quite the same…

Indeed your responses and my questions do make up the vast majority of these threads (I noticed that Kalmbach calls them topics). I do appreciate thoses replies.

It all depends on the mood and the situation. If I’m not rushed, it’s fun to watch the whole train go by - as several have said, seeing the variety of reporting marks, cars, etc is intriguing.

Since I’ve been working on the rehab/upgrade of the local incident command simulator, I’ve been watching more closely - mostly for HazMat, so I can create reasonably accurate replicas. It does make life interesting - trying to determine the load and note common characteristics.

And yes, watching a whole string of hoppers roll by is impressive. Just car after car of sameness, but still fascinating.

Ive watched hundreds of loads of coal and iron ore as a kid and always waited for the man in the caboose to at least acknowage my existance. I always wondered who could use that much coal,being a farm kid with a coal stove and furnace. I still wonder where all the cars are going and whats in them. I guess Im still the kid who wants to look in every box to see whats in there. Yes I like the motive power, as a kid steam and now diesel electric.

I have been into trains for a number of years and my interest has always been passenger cars and passenger train operations. Locomotives? They’re ok. I’ll look at them out of curiosity but Im more intrested in the passenger equipment that is being pulled by the engine. My experiences have included cab rides in diesels and in a certain 4-8-4 which no longer runs, but give me a dome lounge or a heavyweight Pullman observation any day!

Hay if you want some passanger action come over here to Philadelphia, PA and surrounding areas. Philly eats, sleeps, and breaths passanger trains. We have Septa, NJT, Amtrak, Metro North, MRAC. Tons of Septa and Amtrak traffic over here. only 15 mins from my house is the NEC. Your the oposite of me I’m always complaing because, there isn’t that much freight action over here.
I personaly love all the aspects of railroads; passanger, freight, tourist lines, and city rail. However, I’m going to have to say the main attraction of railroading to me is the motive power. Why do you think I became obsessed with diesel engines??? lol.

In the mid '80s I knew the man who published this magazine.It was a monthly,and dealt exclusively with freight cars,and leaned heavily with details for modelers.All photos were of prototype equipment.

Was it Freight Cars Journal?

I’ve been to Philadelphia and number of times, since I have relatives in South Philly. They are about 10 min from the NE corridor. During my visits there in my mid-teens I would make it a point to visit the NE corridor line at least for a half day to watch the parade of GG1s hauled Amtrak trains, Metroliners and Septa locals. Even my first Amtrak ride was on the Broadway Limited from Chicago to Philadelphia in 1972. I’ve ridden the RDC version of Reading’s Wall Street to and from New York, and Amtrak trains north and south of there numerous times. In my recent Philadelphia - New York trips I have been driving to Princeton Junction and hopping on a NJT train to NY - Amtrak has become too overpriced on that route. On several occasions during my c

I can’t!!! Then again, I can testify to having seen one recently…

I agree that endless shots of the latest power can get boring. I live near the Canadian Pacific in Milwaukee, and the AC4400 after AC4400 after AC4400 – and there’s typically only one on a train – just plain gets monotonous after a short while. (Although I’ve found a couple of gems.) I’ve taken to chasing, for example, an entire series of locomotive on a particular railroad, and also lease units, runthrus, and the shortline/regional railroad that runs in the area.

Of course, I find freight cars to be fascinating, too. Check out one of my recent railfanning days, there’s plenty of fascinating freight cars out there too! My photography hobby actually started as an outgrowth of my model railroading hobby; though I freelanced railroads, I wanted realistic-looking cars to run on my layout, so I started taking pictures of freight cars for which I knew there was a model available! “Hey, there goes an Athearn PS2 hopper” or “there’s a Roundhouse FMC boxcar” were some of the things I said to myself as I snapped pictures on a cheap old camera!

Of course, from there my hobby morphed from model RRing to railroad photography. And I also got better at finding trains before they got to where I was [:D]! And then my hobby grew to include maintaining a website! And I got a nice digital camera, and started taking more pictures!

But I still like freight cars. Especially the nice, shiny, new ones, and the ones that still wear the paint of railroads long merged into another company, which in turn has disappeared under the paint of yet another company…

Have a

The SD45 was the sexiest locomotive ever built[;)]

My interest revolves around the locomotives. A cut of cars in a yard doesn’t warrant a passing glance from me. It just isn’t my definition of a train. HOWEVER, a light-engine move isn’t my idea of a train, either. Ya’ gotta have both.

But honestly, do any of us actually have a favorite freight car?

SPFE 458757, which is a mechanical reefer built by PCF.

My top five types of rail cars are:
Mechanical reefers
Tank cars (espicially 30,000 gallon general service and 33,500 gallon pressure)
RBLs
ACF Center-flow hoppers
Boxcars