King of the road

[chessie4155]

Here's a shot of "the Kings of the road" . I haven't seen anything like this on the real thing for years now, as a kid it was kind of a common thing to see a Hobo or two on any given freight train.

 

[doctorwayne]

As a kid, I lived right across the street from the TH&B tracks in Hamilton, and can recall one or two instances where one of these guys would knock on the door, looking for something to eat, in exchange for doing an odd job or two. If they were polite, my Mom would give them a sandwich and something to drink (non-alcoholic), but she didn't expect any work in exchange for it. I was pretty small, so I didn't have any contact with them. They weren't allowed into the house, and ate their meal on the back porch. I had an uncle who "rode the rods" across Canada during the Depression: he later went on to establish the (mythical) Barney Secord's Crop Dusting & Aerial Survey Company, responsible for several shots of my layout, posted elsewhere. He was also the proprietor of Secord Distributors, in South Cayuga on my layout, but that's a whole different tale. If you've seen the picture posted in another thread, with his warehouse in the background, you might "get my drift".

Wayne

 

[Russ Bellinis]

We stayed at our timeshare in Dana Point one year, we usually trade to go someplace outside of So Cal, and the Santa Fe freights coming up from San Diego had so many illegals riding, that you would have thought any gon or flat car was intended for passenger service! they were even hanging off the roofs of box cars and reefers.