While looking for a good read the other day (a favorite pastime) I came across a thread on a Hunters forum about the strangest thing they have ever seen while hunting. Makes sense, deep woods can hide everything from crashed aircraft to abandoned cars to Sasquatch himself! Others reported strange activity. It was an interesting thread and reminded me that on occasion I have come face to face with strange and sometimes cool things while railfaning or walking an old abandoned line. So here is the deal. Post the strangest thing you have seen while researching your current or abandoned ROW. Abandoned cars? Strange equipment? Or maybe strange activity. Just please, keep the activity stories family friendly. Yes I have seen couples going at it, but no need to go into details! I'll start with mine. Back in October while researching the Northern Line of the former B&M, I took my bike. The line from Boscawen NH all the way north is now a bike trail so research is so much faster. I would drive for a ways, park Jess my Jeep, and ride a few miles up the former ROW. As I was coming down the line I noticed a small creek and took mental notes as to how it would cross under the main. I stopped short of the small bridge to snap a few pictures for documentation of both the bridge and the land mass. As my eyes progressed towards a small embankment I noticed a small two man boat upside down near the embankment. I soon realized however, it was not a boat, but a car. Seems someone I guess in the late 1960's got tired of the 1950's era cruiser and pushed the old girl over the edge. A common practice at one time, and this car had been there a while. See if some of you guys can figure out what it was when it rolled out of Detroit. Not really the weirdest thing I have seen, but certainly one of the coolest. So there you have it, what is your strangest? Again, lets keep it family friendly and factual, but the weirder, the better!
The most interesting item I've come across while hiking through woods was a mid-twenties Franklin sedan in the late 50's. Surprisingly, the wooden wheel spokes were still mostly intact, though the interior cloth was pretty far gone.
While chasing the 844/4449 double header from Tacoma-Everett a few years back with a buddy of mine we came across a very shocking site. We were walking along Richmond Beach and heard something back in the brush. A few moments later we realized what it was. It was an old couple in their 60s getting it on! They came out of the brush naked as the day they were born. Not exactly what one would expect while railfanning.
I go seeking out old logging railroad rights-of-way. When do I NOT find something strange? One that I found this last year was the old town site of Keasey, Oregon. There is really no town there anymore, and a lot of the former clearing has grown back. I didn't know this prior to visiting. The Google Earth aerial view is low-res, and seems to show a clearing and a few buildings, so I thought that there was a chance at doing some railroad archaeology. There is a house there and lots of vehicles around. This isn't so strange as Oregon's hinterlands are FULL of weird little houses with extensive collections of dead cars, but the two dogs that came running out to the road were very strange. They ran exceptionally fast, though both seemed standard issue mutts, not some sort of dog bred for speed. Also, for living on the highway from Vernonia they were NOT very street-wise. They kept running up alongside my car where they'd then jump in front and stop. I had to trick them into getting behind the car by backing up and then I put it in drive and PUNCHED IT to get away from them. The road was closed shortly after that and the old grade of the Eastside Logging line proved a little advanced for my Grand Voyager, so I started backing up, and lo and behold, here are the strange dogs again. Aggggh. One of them appeared to be nipping my tires. I backed up slowly to avoid hitting them, and got myself turned around at the old junction, and once they got behind me I PUNCHED IT again down that gravel road. I half-expected some guy carrying a sickle to appear in the road-way ahead of me suddenly, but I got beyond the old town limits of Keasey and the dogs turned back and I was done, and right about then my wife spotted the remains of a cool trestle, which made the whole trip worthwhile. Keasey was a total bust, but the trestle, some of which can be seen in my TB album, was cool looking. Note to creepy Stephen King family sorts of folks living in the far reaches of Oregon - if you have essentially purchased a whole town, let it crumble, and have made it off-limits, try posting a sign indicating the same, but also recognize that the roadway is still public and please don't kidnap my family and torture us in an old camper.
Awesome guys! keep them coming, I know there are more like this! I like spooky stuff, here is one that happened to me a few years back. Right after my divorce, I moved to a small town just west of Champaign. I lived in a duplex just a couple hundred yards from the old Peoria & Eastern RR tracks, now NS. I used to time my smoke breaks back then to the sound of the diesel horn getting close to one of the many grade crossings in town. This night was a warm and sticky June or July night and as luck would have it, a horn blared in the night around 11:00 or so. I went to my driveway facing the tracks and lit up. I could now hear the diesel thumping as it worked its way up the mild grade. The sound got louder and louder, soon one grade signal started, then the next streets crossings lights started then the next until the set in front of my duplex. I waited and could hear the the train, blaring away, getting more and more noisy then bam. Dead quiet. No train and no crossing signal. nothing. I stood there thinking maybe it stopped. I walked out around a bit and never saw the train. I was a bit ticked at the time cause I figured he stopped and backed up to Champaign. Could have happened, but funny there was no sound as he backed up. Ghost train? Maybe, you decide. Keep em coming guys!
Don't know if you'd call it strange, but one time while chasing Texas State Railroad's old Santa Fe Pacific 1316 through the East Texas woods, a deer came up from beside the road and jumped basically right over the front bumper of the car. Whereupon I started kicking myself because I had a camera in my hand, but was so completely surprised I didn't use the damned thing.
In the early 90s a buddy and I were railfanning the Loops of the Clinchfield in North Carolina and ran into a couple other guys in their 60s. As we were standing there a couple trains came and went with not much interesting. After the they went by and our conversation continued, one of the other guys said that he had some photos of trains that he had captured on film (before the days of digital) on other outings. Off to his van he went and returned with about 6 photo albums. He flips them open and there if front of a passing locomotive was a topless woman. Over weight, breasts down to her waist, teeth missing, standing there waving to the crew. She was in at least 50% of his photos dressed about the same way, and sometimes mooning the crew. I was about to stick my foot in my mouth, but was saved by my buddy when he asked who she was. "My wife" said the owner of the photos. :shock:mg:
Yikes... that's one odd railfanning technique... :shock:mg: Would have been interesting to hear the scuttlebutt around the engine shed...
Sorry, have never run across any topless women or anyone having sex, but when I was a kid a friend and I would walk the tracks out of town a couple of miles (C&O, ex PM Port Huron sub) to a small concrete arch located in a spot along a small creek or drain that for some reason seemed vaguly disturbing. One of the strangest things about it was the diesel sounds that could sometimes be heard there after which no train would appear. Might have been road noise or something similar (main road was a half mile or more away) but we never did figure it out. At the time, it seemed quite disconcerting, but not enough to keep us from going back to check it out and wonder about it all over again.
There were enough ties and rail to hold three Commonwealth style six wheel trucks. The roadbed was at about a 30° "super elevation" leaning back into a hill side.
