What happened to hobos on the railroads?

Many hobos were killed or injured while trying to board or jump off a moving freight train. Others became locked inside box or refrigerator cars, their bodies found weeks later. Some hobos found places on trains to hide from the bulls who policed the cars, only to be crushed when the freight shifted.



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For a variety of reasons the practice is less common in the 21st century, although a community of freight-train riders still exists. Typically, hoppers will go to a rail yard where trains stop to pick up and unload freight and switch out crew.

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Life as a hobo was dangerous. In addition to the problems of being itinerant, poor, and far from home and support, plus the hostility of many train crews, they faced the railroad police, nicknamed bulls, who had a reputation of violence against trespassers.

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According to one estimate, the hobo ranks swelled to 4 million adults and 250,000 teenagers between 1929 and World War II. These steam-engine hobos crisscrossed the country looking for paying work and a hot meal, hitching illegal rides between, on top, underneath and occasionally inside train cars.

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Train surfing is illegal on most railways in the world, with some exceptions. Many railroad companies usually take a zero tolerance policy to practice of riding on exterior parts of trains, and employ railway police and guards in an attempt to prevent the practice.

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While modern trains won't litter the tracks with human excrement, the traditional method did just that. This is what was known as a hopper toilet. It could either be a simple hole in the floor (also known as a drop chute toilet) or a full-flush system.

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The main reason is that bus stations, and train stations also, are places open to the general public, and the homeless folk you see there use the bus station as a place to pass the time of day, take a nap, people watch to see who looks vulnerable to “begging”, to meet with other homeless they trust for safety, and ...

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Despite a decline in popularity, passenger trains still exist in the United States. Most of their riders are in New England, in what the train world calls the Northeast Corridor. Traveling by train from New York to Washington, DC, is much more comfortable than flying, so it's an easy choice for many commuters.

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