A highly informed train photographer on the receiving end of what can be called the “railroad security.”
This author has been in love with trains most of her life. I have had several phases where I went out looking trains to watch. My childhood with train watching is highlighted by the Chessie System, the Ches-C, Chessie System logo, and seeing the sparkling, new blue and yellow railcars with the “cat head,” as I called it as a 10 year old girl. The Ches-C became a part of me, my soul, since I first saw it in the Summer or ’73. I’ve continued to love trains and railroads and would always stop to watch a train. It used to be acceptable to watch trains as an adult, but something has changed. Long after the September 11, 2001 attacks, going trackside can be a dangerous experience for some of us. It doesn’t seem to be a dangerous experience for everyone, like my white, male railfan friends.
What “railroad security” looks like from trackside. Starting in early March 2024, I was sitting trackside at about 10:30 PM, like I have been for a couple of months at this crossing. I was out checking the track lights when a police car rolled up (roll up is what police DO call it) and told me I “might be too close to the tracks,” but no, the cop said, it doesn’t look like it. I was sitting on the shoulder of a public roadway and, as I thought, protected by the First Amendment. I showed him my ID when asked, I knew I did not have to show it, but I’m pro-police and felt like I wanted to help in understanding why I was there. This was not the worst of what I have had to go through. In Waukesha, sitting trackside eating lunch I would get highbeams lighting up my back window. I would be followed, tailgating and surrounded by hostile people, usually men. The police seemed to agree with this mob action. What chased me out of Waukesha was the trains stopped running, something I suspect and have heard through the grape-vine is not a business decision by the railroad, Canadian National, but demanded by the local police. If true, CN would be an accomplice in my persecution and attacks on my civil rights in Waukesha.
I have been subject to other police encounters while trackside, the roll ups with the blue and red lights as if I was a dangerous felon. The high speed approach toward the front of my car while trackside, as if to slam into us, and the blinding with high beams, as if we’re dangerous felons. I had a friend with me who, in his ten years of railfanning, has never heard of such an aggressive police approach (roll up) toward railfans who are just watching trains.
The railroad security has picked on the wrong person! Having an academic background in police practices and a post graduate degree in national security, I seek to understand why there is an obvious criminalization of train watching and photography. Why the aggressive roll ups from police? Why police are called at all for people who are obviously watching trains? Why is this 62 year old senior lady who loves trains and taking pictures of them regarded as a dangerous threat to a community?!
It probably has to do with “terrorism” and the “threat of terrorism” against railroads. Terrorism is a topic I have studied on a post-graduate level. You can’t just say a person taking pictures on a public roadway is a “terrorist” and giving “indications of terrorism.” Terrorism is about motivation for a violent act, a violent act committed in the name of some cause. Even as the recent court cases that have given First Amendment protections to especially train photography, there is still a harassment of some train photographers. This harassment appears to a form of sex discrimination, or sexism by proxy, when I’m trackside, as men don’t have my experiences of police encounters. Still, this 62 year old lady does not to even remotely look like a “terrorist” and having a Nikon camera around my neck should state I’m not a suicide!
Here is what really motivated me…the AAR’s “indicators of terrorism!” A couple of week ago, I came across a post on Reedit that included a picture of a flyer that was from the American Association of Railroads with the heading “Indicators of Terrorism.” As someone who has studied terrorism, I found this flyer to be a means to demonize and have train crews report railfans doing railfan stuff, and stuff I also do. Talking about trains with other railfans, chasing and tracking trains on their routes, and arriving before that heritage unit shows up is a skill…and these railfan skills have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. Likewise, train photography is about art, not terrorist reconnaissance! Again, “terrorism” has some indicators, but typical railfanning behaviors are not any of them. Again, “terrorism” has many definitions around the world and in various contexts of terrorism studies, but it’s about “the commission of a violent act in the furtherance of a political, social, or religious cause, which also causes fear against populations of people or governments.” This author intends to use this blog to separate terrorism from train photography and railfanning…but also to point out and explain how she got to be criminalized and described as a “bad guy” for her love of trains and photographing them.
Yes, the wrong person has been picked on and she will come to the defense of our Great American Hobby!