Well, that’s one less cop to harass you about taking photos of trains… [swg]
I used to be a safe foamer. I wouldn’t trespass or be at all unsafe, but I’d go for the camera every time I saw a train.
Now I’m just a railfan. I still photograph trains, and carry a camera everywhere just in case, but if there’s a choice between taking a lousy grab shot that doesn’t even show the whole train and is unusable anywhere of a boring train (example) or just watching it pass, I’ll leave the camera in its bag…
As I understand it, railfan=fan of the railroad. But other guys think it’s rail fanatic. Oh well. And to the guy whose 20-month old gets excited about the trains, it’s hard to find a kid that young NOT get that excited. You gotta wait at least several years to find out what his true colors are.
Goes back to my previous statement - a rail fanatic is someone who is more enthusiastic about trains than you are. And we all know that we aren’t rail fanatics - we just have an interest in trains…
I suspect all of us have something that takes us over the line from simply interested in trains to raging lunatic. Might be steam, might be cabooses, might be ALCOs, etc and so on.
I have to walk for exercise, so my daily route includes the street all the way up and back parellell to the tracks. I live 100 yards from the tracks (on purpose) and when I hear a train I put the TV on mute until I can’t heard it anymore. If I’m driving on the highway next to the tracks and see a train, I kill the radio, turn off the AC and open the electric windows so I can hear and smell the train.
Well “fan” is a shortened form of “fanatic” so it works either way for “Railfans”.
As far as “Foamer” the most logical explanation is it refers to a railfan so obsessed he is “foaming at the mouth” about trains. I first heard the term on a UK / BBC show about railways maybe 20 years ago. In that show, one of the railwaymen they talked to said he thought it was derived from “foamite”, a fire extinguisher product all engines carried. In the UK railfans are sometimes called “anoraks” due to the type of (IIRC) raincoats they wore.
The first time I heard the term “foamer” applied to us was back in the 70’s from an engineer friend who is also a big railfan. He said that was how the supposedly non-fan railroaders referred to us in general.
Foamer is now considered an insult to railfans and is used as an acronym a bad acronym that some of the American railroaders don’t like and according to Wikipedia is very pejorative. F is an expletive we cannot say, O is Overreacted, A is Arrogant, M is Mentally Retarded, E is Eccentric, and R is Railfan. Originally it applied to railfans who do dangerous things or armchair railfans nowadays Canadian,Eastern US, and European railfans and Engineers use it to apply to all of us and it has become nasty name-calling has gone on and we have called the engineers and police of the railroads old hobo terms and even called them murderers. Shack and Bull have been used grudgenly against train crews and police often leading to the railfans being kicked out of the community or worse arrested under the false charge a battery on a police officer and insulting rail crews and officers when in reality these European,Canadian, and Eastern US, crews have been insulting us. Please do not use the word foamer to refer to railfans or use the acronym for foamer to refer to us directly and railfans do not use the word Shack or Bull to refer to train crews or police it will get you arrested and you will be charged.
Foamer is an insult that European crews and railfans used to refer to Americans and this term is very pejorative and they use the acronym for it which is very bad when compared to the word foamer. The acronym for foamer uses all the letters to refer to railfans and they’re all insults. The f word over-reactive aragant mentally retarded eccentric railfan used to refer to the bad ones and now it is referred to all of us. The railroads of the United States hated and even the railfans of the United States hate the word foamer when it’s used as an acronym also train crews don’t like being called Shack and please don’t like being called Bull because it goes back to the Great Depression when train crews and police actually killed hobos and railfans for trespassing. Jack London’s railroad dictionary in the book The Road have left a bad impression on both railfans, the crews who run trains, and the police. This has even been made worse by the movie Emperor of the North which is based on The Road. Railfans do not trespass on Railroad property but some of them do and train crews and police do not brutalize or kill railfans or hobos this is not Emperor of the North and this is not The Road and we are not living in the 1930s. Do not use the word foamer to apply to railfans do not use Shack or Bull to refer to the police and train crews. They are insults and they should not be used in our vocabulary.
You can make an offensive acronym out of any word… you can also make a complementary one, too. The original term of “Foamer” was NOT an acronym but was the name applied to a steam locomotive boiler that tended to foam too much and cause water carry-over into the cylinders.
It was not intended to be a term of endearment about the engine, nor as a term of endearment when applied to a overly reactive railfan (referring to the fan becoming so excited at seeing train that he/she might start foaming at the mouth).
Those that convert a word to a profane acronym are just exposing their knowledge of profanity. Not necessarily a good indication of a quality education.
Of course… ACRONYM is itself an acronym:
A Coded Rendition Of a Name Yielding Meaning
and so is the plural form:
A Coded Rendition Of a Name Yielding Meaning Sometimes
TRAIN
Totally Reliable And Important Necessity
RAIL
Really Ancient Incompetent Loser
PROGRAMMER (the profession of yours truly)
Probably Ridiculous Old Geezer And Mostly Maimed Egotistical Rube
Back in the 1990’s, I heard a presentation given by John H. White, Historian, prolific author and researcher, and Curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s Transportation Department. I think this was presented at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg.
He said railfans come in three categories: Glazers, Foamers, and FLAMs.
A Glazer is one whose eyes glaze over at the sight of a train.
A Foamer is one who foams at the mouth at the sight of a train.
A FLAM is a “Foamer, Lives At Mom’s”.
I didn’t say it. He did, so blame him.
Now I have a question: The British use the term “Gricer”. Can anybody define it for me? Is it the same as “Foamer”?
reality is we all have a little foamer in us. Some Bout trains, other boats And some just thier kids. If you don’t have passion or interest in something, then ya might need to see if you still have a pulse.
Long before the word “foamer” became commonplace, what I heard being used by most railfans, rail magazine contributors, and editors both on the West Coast and in the Northeast was “foamite.” I can’t tell you when or by whom it originated, but the earliest example I’m aware of is a photo taken in 1978, which appeared in the 25th Anniversary issue of CTC Board magazine in April 1995. The photo showed a young Dale Sanders and Ken Meeker sitting next to WP track just inside a tunnel portal, with the term “FOAMITE” neatly spelled out on the concrete wall behind them. The caption said it stood for Far Out Advanced Mentally Incompetent Train Enthusiast.
Hello, I’m new to this forum. I have read it for a long time but never posted before. I’m a retired civil engineer (structural design) and live in the city of Essen in Germany. I’m interested in American Railroads since my first visits to the USA in the early 1980s.
Gricer is the description for a trainspotters. In the UK other names are used like anorak, rail buff, and others but not foamer. Here is a link to an unproved etymology of gricer: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gricer
I would realy be surprised if “foamer” was invented in Europe. In Germany we use German terms like Pufferküsser, Nietenzähler (buffer kisser, rivet counters), and others. France has its own French expressions: Ferrovipathe, Ferroviphile. What ever they mean?
When I first read of foamer here on the forum I had to google it. I’d never heard it before even on visits in the USA.
Regards, Volker (Germany)
When I first read “foamer” here on the forum I had to google it.
