This article from NPR is (kinda) making the rounds, so I figured attention should be brought to it.

NPR Article: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/17/g-s1-435 ... bos-travel

Trains Magazine Article: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... cials-say/

Personally, if I were to do this, it would be for the purpose of reenactment as part of a steam era photo charter

Looking at the comments under the Trains magazine article, the AAR, OLI and FRA raising a fuss over the NPR article is shooting the messenger. Social media content, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram; etc. is doing more to spread the train hopping appeal than NPR who is just covering the trend. Especially since NPR's audience tends to skew older and more educated (probably a description of all the AAR/OLI/FRA people who read it as well), it's not capturing the next generation of train hoppers; but YouTube certainly is.

I watched a video on train hopping a few days ago on YouTube. The YouTuber is an avid train hopper; who was discussing the risks with the hobby. He even mentioned to recovering addicts that the drug culture associated with hobos is a risk in of itself, for people who don't want to relapse. It was a case where the train hopper had a level head about what he was doing and while he was in a sense still advocating for his illegal hobby, it came with the "yes but..." statement to discourage casual people from giving it a try. Still very illegal, but not surprising in the same appeal urban exploring videos also have on social media.

There was a time though in railroad history where hobo and boomer once blurred the definitions between the two. There is a haunting scene in "My Life on Mountain Railroads" where a hobo is invited into the locomotive cab on a cold winter day and asked to "pay his way" by helping to break up coal for the engine, in exchange for warmth and some food. The locomotive crew also asks the hobo if he knows any poetry and the poem he recites is hauntingly beautiful; of love lost and past triumphs and defeats. It's not hard to deny the romanticism of that scene, while also realizing it is from a different place and time in history.

Emperor of the North!