What about "Amtrak" and "Pickin' & Grinnin'" on the SR trips way down south? Amtrak was a fellow from Florida who had pop top rings embedded around his fingers and wore a long dark grey overcoat. Rumor was that his family was loaded and made arrangements for him to fly to host cities, stay at nice hotels, have transportation to departure sites, and of course ride the Specials. P&G was a nice fella who carried a beat up guitar and walked the trains lightly strumming and singing. Not sure he knew any songs completely, but he was always friendly and smiling!

> Whatever happened to these "ultra"
> infamous steam foamers?

Okay, who remembers/knows an older, slender, slightly beak-nosed guy who used to show up with a really old and cheap portable cassette recorder, no microphone either, dressed in a long gray trench coat typically? Lord knows how often I saw him making recordings of steam during the 1980s, totally oblivious to the finer points of audio recording......

And how many characters do/did we best know by the vehicles they drove? Remember:

The guy from New Jersey in a white Geo Metro with a broken driver's door handle, hanging at an angle, with its driver looking perhaps too big to fit in said vehicle, which kept looking like it would fall apart any mile now--and it re-appeared year after year trackside?

Some of the air horn collectors--like the bozo with one on his PRR red van that used to honk it at inappropriate times (such as driving up to the Charlottesville depot) (bad), OR the guys with an air horn collection on the roll bar of a Jeep that parked it at the edge of a field along the Nittany & Bald Eagle and traded whistles with PRR 1361 for several minutes one trip (good!)?

Certain license plates--Steve Barry's "NRHS and Jim Boyd's "RAILFAN", for starts?



LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net

> Certain license plates--Steve Barry's
> "NRHS and Jim Boyd's
> "RAILFAN", for starts? Some other favorites:

PMN1
GT6325
GTWU3B
GT1776
FOAMER (YES, a Michigan plate, and I've never found out who)
PMFAN
CPRAIL
STEAM

And some odd but cool ones:
CNOFAN
NSTEAM
CHESSZ

TJG




tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

Funny thread! Most of these guys (at least the ones I've met) are decent people and are relatively harmless.

> Okay, who remembers/knows an older, slender,
> slightly beak-nosed guy who used to show up
> with a really old and cheap portable
> cassette recorder, no microphone either,
> dressed in a long gray trench coat
> typically? Lord knows how often I saw him
> making recordings of steam during the 1980s,
> totally oblivious to the finer points of
> audio recording......

Sandy,

Sounds like "Shoebox" (see Kurt's list)... very well known around NJ/DE/PA steam tourist lines for last 20 or so years. He used to carry his recorder in a shoebox (hence nickname). Really not a bad fellow, IIRC Dan is his name. He got into a bad car accident a few years back and I haven't seen him trackside in a while.

> And how many characters do/did we best know
> by the vehicles they drove? Remember:

I remember a couple "cab unit vans" that were/are pretty cool that could found trackside here in the Northeast some years back. A Chevy done up like a tuscan red PRR E8 and a Dodge done up like a RDG FP7.

Regards,
Jim Robinson

> Now, this guy was in the constant company
> (in NS steam territory) of some older guy
> with thick glasses who always introduced
> himself and asked your name before pulling
> out a pocketful of badly dog-eared photo
> prints of his escapades over the years; I'm
> assuming the character in question may have
> been one of the other three
> painfully-memorable characters you mentioned
> above.

That was indeed Superheater. And I haven't seen either one for years.

How about RRHSTRY? ;-)

> PMN1
> GT6325
> GTWU3B
> GT1776
> FOAMER (YES, a Michigan plate, and I've
> never found out who)
> PMFAN
> CPRAIL
> STEAM

> And some odd but cool ones:
> CNOFAN
> NSTEAM
> CHESSZ

> TJG

Ah yessss, I do recall the man in the derby hat but I can't recall his name. We referred to him as "Foghorn Leghorn" because of his loud voice. He really was an ok guy, though.

Some of the others I never met but did observe were:
* A guy in an old black raincoat who usually had a stogie in his mouth and carried an instamatic camera in a paper bag.He always smelled like a cheap cigar.

* A man who never took pictures but kept copious notes of every locomotive and car he observed in motion or at yards.

* A man selling film on a Jacksonville-Valdosta SR fan trip. He was in the commisary car standing behind a bare counter. I asked what he was doing and he said, "selling film".
I pointed out that he had no signs or displays to let people know he had film and asked, "how do you expect to sell it?"
His reply was, "If they want it, they'll ask for it".

There are others, many, many others. It seems railroading attracts a lot of wierdos but virtually all of them are harmless.

- Jim Herron

Herron Rail Video
hrvideo@mindspring.com

Ah yessss, I do recall the man in the derby hat but I can't recall his name. We referred to him as "Foghorn Leghorn" because of his loud voice. He really was an ok guy, though.

Some of the others I never met but did observe were:
* A guy in an old black raincoat who usually had a stogie in his mouth and carried an instamatic camera in a paper bag.He always smelled like a cheap cigar.

* A man who never took pictures but kept copious notes of every locomotive and car he observed in motion or at yards.

* A man selling film on a Jacksonville-Valdosta SR fan trip. He was in the commisary car standing behind a bare counter. I asked what he was doing and he said, "selling film".
I pointed out that he had no signs or displays to let people know he had film and asked, "how do you expect to sell it?"
His reply was, "If they want it, they'll ask for it".

There are others, many, many others. It seems railroading attracts a lot of wierdos but virtually all of them are harmless.

- Jim Herron

Herron Rail Video
hrvideo@mindspring.com

> The first UP trip I rode May 1970 there was some fellow with a sweatshirt or t shirt that said "coal smoke is good for your health". Some of the other folks said he hit the eastern trips to and would be drunk by about the third photo run! And he was. Never saw him again, although have seen some photos of photo run bys with the same shirt, so must have been him!

jimhollis612@charter.net

There have been some good ones at the Cass Railfan wkds. Not saying the following individuals are foamers, just have good tags.

I have seen several that were along the lines of
Shay 5
WM 6
Shay

And Mr. Rob Hoffers tag:

Ibuybno

Virginia must be the easiest state to get vanity tags in as they are seemingly everywhere!

Mark

bbjimbo@yahoo.com

> How about RRHSTRY? ;-)
Back around 1980 my daughters surprised me with a personalized place for my Ford pickup: RAILMAN (apparently RAILFAN had been taken in California) The plate has since adorned a 75 Chevy Malibu, an 88 Dodge Aries and now a 2001 Honda Accord. The truck was a no-frills 1960 half-ton, but it did a lot of hauling for Orange Empire Ry. Museum. On one side, vinyl letters spelled out "Duarte Northern Ry. Co. 115" (the Honda is DN 122) One morning I came out of a donut shop and found a guy checking out the truck; I had to assure him that he would NOT find DNRY in the Official Guide.

This thread seems to recall mostly Eastern "foamers"; rest assured we have an assortment of "odd ducks" out west too. Some of them we have to keep an eye on so they don't wander in front of a moving train. Others will pester crew members with repeated or inane questions. And yes, there are socially and hygienically challenged weirdos that you don't want near the "normal" visitors. Some (thank goodness) don't get out to the Museum very often but can fill a club meeting with bloviation. I used to collect LP and 45 rpm records, and some of the guys one would encounter in old-record shops were several bricks short of a full pallet, too.
Unless a "foamer" is a danger to himself or visitors, it's probably best to use courtesy as much as possible; if visitors see museum members dealing with a situation in a professional manner, whether it's a derailment, a stalled engine, or a "challenged" visitor, it reflects well on a museum, and helps dispell the "boys playing with big toys" atmosphere.

On a Friends of the East Broad Top volunteer work weekend a couple of months ago, Chris Coleman and I discovered that we each had the same vanity license plate, but issued by different states. So we parked them side by side for a photo op: EBTRR (Ohio, his) and EBTRR (Pa., mine).

My plate now identifies a bland yet dependable Saturn, but in the past it's been worn by a Cavalier, an Olds, and, probably most fittingly of all, a Chevette (definitely narrow-gauge!).

Dan Cupper
Harrisburg, Pa.

cupper@att.net

T.J may appreciate this more, being from Michigan, but when I lived in Pennsylvania, my sucession of Mustang converibles had "TORCH L" with a frame that said "My other car is a 1950 Pullman", for my ex Pere Marquette, ex C&O Parlor Car (Torch Lake). Now owned by and awaiting restoration at TVRM in Chattanooga.

Steve


SZuidervee@aol.com

Several Michigan license plates bearing combinations of the letters "PM 1225" were registered to 1225 fireman Dick Hak. I suppose these will become available following Dick's passing earlier this year, after only a few years of retirement from CSX.

When the 1225 was hauled from East Lansing to Owosso in 1982, it was chased by a 1970's Volkswagen sedan painted in Chessie System yellow-orange-blue. That one was never seen again, but whether done in by Michigan road salt, its own natural fragility, or the CSX legal department is unknown.

Aarne Frobom (license no. HWY 61)