Hopping Freights & Riding Hogs : the extreme sports of risk-taking personalities

When I was working in a hotel around 2015, a fellow employee, a young mother of small kids, about 35, told me of her experiences riding the rails all over North America in the late 1990s.

I suspect she meant hopping freights because riding the rails, literally riding the rods, is more like suicide than a mode of transport.

The rods were loosely laid under the train on the wheel assemblies and a sharp turn or hard bump could propel you out off and to your death.

God knows that jumping on and off freights is deadly enough : usually people sneak on the freight when it isn’t moving in a big rail yard and exit the same way.

Hobos and migrants did it, do it, because they had no choice.

Why do kids still do it ?

Some people seem to need to feel close to death to feel fully alive : extreme sports.

Hellraisers....