KaBar

Love motorcycles, hate helmets, also hate getting killed Which is why I very rarely ever ride motorcycles any more. I have seen some fairly gruesome motorcycle wrecks, but the worst one I ever saw was in San Francisco--this guy on a riceburner blew through a red light and hit a guy in a car coming out of a side street. He castrated himself on the gas tank and fairing and hit the driver's side window with his head. The dude was in major agony, hurting so bad he couldn't even scream, just gasping for breath with his mouth open real wide. A crowd of idiots gathered and just stood around watching the guy flounder around on the pavement. The car driver was fucked up too--the scooter was a big bore Kawasaki, and the ricegrinder hit the driver's side door doing at least fifty. The biker hit the fairing and tank, then went airborne over the car and landed in the street about twenty or thirty years past the crash site. Motorcycles are dangerous as a motherfucker, and I love them a lot. But what kills bikers is rider inexperience, rider inattentiveness ("Sure Bob, go ahead and have a beer---one beer won't hurt.") and carelessness of automobile drivers. Bottom line---CAR DRIVERS JUST DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOUR LIFE. Riding motorcycles is on a par with hopping freight trains in terms of hazard. If anything goes wrong---you're fucked.

Kyuzo I'll be 53 in November. Shit, that's fucking old. Hard to believe. The years go by quick, especially when you are trying to raise kids.

I read a bunch of his shit in high school Always liked Papa. Try "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and "Across the River and Into the Trees." Two of my personal, all-time favorites. Go down to the video store, back in the "Classic Movies" section and rent "For Whom The Bell Tolls." It's not as good as the book, but not bad. I soured on Hemingway because he dissed anarchists in his books. It pissed me off. He was a Communist Party sympathizer, and there was a fierce battle going on during the Spanish Civil War between the Communists and the anarchists. The Communists eventually conceded defeat after Franco and his fascist Falangists took power, but the anarchists and the CNT-FAI never conceded as long as Franco was alive. In 1955 (I was five) the anarchists in Spain were still fighting the fascists. In 1968, a well-known young Scottish anarchist, Stuart Christie, was arrested smuggling dynamite to the FIJL (in English, the "Iberian Young Libertarian Federation.") The only problem was that the FIJL had frozen membership in 1945, at the end of WWII to prevent the organization from being infiltrated and subverted, so the average "Young Libertarian" was about forty-five or fifty years old in 1968. Nevertheless, they carried on the guerrilla war against Franco. The most famous anarchist partisan of them all was named "Sabate'."

What the Fuck If you dumpster-dive some fast food, you'll see some shit like you never thought of. What's a pube hair or two? Nasty? Fuckin'-A. Fuckin' pizza guys are probably digging in their crotches and sending a little present with each The Works. Yeah, you gettin' "the works," all right. Garnished with a few little stray panty pubies.

Between age 15 and age 27---a bunch. I kind of lost count. Between age 27 and age 53, ain't but one. Still married, and still faithful. HOWEVER, I'm not trying to put my trip on anyone. People do whatever they do. As long as they are up front with it, what difference does it make? I had a high school friend that turned out to be gay, and who "came out" after we graduated from high school and he went off to college. He was something of a party boy, and had about a zillion sex partners from 1968 til about 1981 Then came HIV. Last time I saw him (about twelve years ago) he told me he had been to SEVENTY-FIVE FUNERALS. Give that shit some thought. HIV don't give a fuck who you are, where you're from, whether you are male or female or whether you are gay, straight, whatever. Fucking around is a bad idea. Find someone you love, and don't stray. You are placing your life in her hands, and vice-versa. So you better fuckin' hope she loves you and stays true blue. And you ought to do the same. In the U.S., we now get 44,000 new AIDS cases every year. God only knows how many HIV positive people are walking around. If it's one percent of the population, that would be 2.7 million cases of HIV. Here in Houston, the infection rate runs 1% in high schools and college, but 12% among street people, like runaway prostitutes, drug addicts, crack heads, etc.. Use your head. THINK FOR YOURSELF. Do the math.

Please stop shouting, you're hurting my widdle eyes.

Pheromones pheromone (fer'o-moan) A substance that provides chemical means of communication between animals, and between certain insects, of the same species. It is probably detected by smell. May affect development, reproduction, or behavior of other individuals. The girls love a big ol' sweaty man. And the boys just love a girl that is in the mood. Hell, yeah. Pheromones rock.

It ain't a game, Mr. Prez. They are playing for keeps. They have a lot more to lose than you do.

The message between the lines "They got PIZZA HUT in Kuwait, but Iraq didn't have shit." I ate Marine Corps chow. It wasn't bad. Boot camp chow was first class. We got big ass steaks on the Marine Corps Birthday (November 10th.) Turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas, with all the trimmings, no matter where you are or what you're doing, you get turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas. But when you're deployed, like in Iraq, you are probably lucky to get three MRE's a day. The real problem isn't chow, but getting enough CLEAN WATER. We take all this shit for granted here in the U.S. You ought to see some of the fucking Third World shitholes they sent us to. Inside the U.S. bases, as soon as it is humanly possible, they bring in pure, clean water, decent housing, decent shower facilities, air conditioning, and enlisted and officer's clubs. Maybe no booze in a Muslim country, but they will have American TV, pool tables, CD players, free Long Distance telephones to the States, etc. Not everywhere, but they will have this shit in the enlisted and officer's clubs, and Special Services clubs. (Special Services is like the recreation specialists. In California our USMC Special Services club had surfboards and skateboards you could check out, pool tables, a big TV room with a fairly large-sized (1978) screen, old-style video games, free coffee, Coke machines, candy machines, etc.) I never checked out any surfboards or skateboards--I already owned my own. When I was on Okinawa, we checked out skeet guns from the Special Services section at the range and shot skeet. It was a lot of fun. The skeet guns were all 12 ga.--and re-loads were dirt cheap. We all loved the fact that you could get a MacDonald's burger right on the base. Why not? Most Marines are about 19 years old. They didn't like the chow hall chow much. Too much like food you would get at school cafeterias. They all wanted "fast food", and plenty of it. So the Iraqis don't have it. Sucks to be them. Their society will be back up and running soon enough.

How much do you weigh? There's a direct co-relation between how much you weigh, and how alcohol affects you. All that claptrap about mixing drinks, and whiskey (or vodka, or tequila, whatever) afecting you differently is nonsense. Booze is ethanol (ethyl alcohol.) Any way that it gets into your bloodstream will work. Some ways are way more effective than others. For instance, I sure wouldn't inject it unless you really wanted to die. It would stop your heart, like, immediately. Adios, unfortunate person. In general, I'd say ix-nay on the eedle-nay althogether. People who drink straight whiskey (say, 80 proof) are drinking a beverage that contains 40% ethanol by weight. The other 60% is water and contaminants from the inside of a charred oak whiskey barrel. So if you drank a solution of Kool-Aid with 40% ethanol by volume, it would be EXACTLY THE SAME amount of intoxication. The rule of thumb for psych nurses and ER nurses is "one shot of hard liquor equals one beer equals one glass of wine." The problem is that you can drink three or four shots in a short period of time, but you probably couldn't drink three or four beers that fast without throwing them up. Wine goes down pretty easy, especially if you are eating or entertaining in a social atmosphere. Gotta be careful. You don't want to wind up shitfaced if you need to drive home. Also, the water in the beer and wine encourages you to urinate, which helps your kidney eliminate the alcohol, but nothing but time can help your liver metabolize the alcohol and it's metabolites. I once had a co-worker who used to work on a cardiac (heart) unit. She talked about getting these winos in her unit from the ER, who drank a bunch of booze every day, but rarely ate. "Their arteries were clean as a whistle, but their livers looked like a shriveled up old shoe."

Similar Story I used to work at a psychiatric hospital in Houston that had a telephone number that was one digit off from War--I mean, MegaGiant Cable TV. For some reason, whenever MegaGiant Cable would cut off service for non-payment, people would frequently mis-dial MegaGiant Cable's number and they would get our psychiatric unit. Usually it was a conversation that went: <ring> Me: "Unit One, Youth Services. This is Mr. Ka-Bar, may I help you?" Irate Caller: "YOU PEOPLE CUT OFF MY GODDAMN CABLE! I PAID THE BILL ON TIME, ASSHOLE! TURN IT BACK ON!" Me: "I'm sorry, sir, but you must be trying to reach MegaGiant Cable. This is a psychiatric hospital. Hang up, and re-dial." Irate Caller: "DON'T GIVE ME THAT SHIT, MOTHERFUCKER! TURN MY CABLE BACK ON! I'M GONNA COME DOWN THERE AND KICK YOUR WHITEBREAD ASS, BITCH!" Me: "Sir, you sound really angry and upset. This is a psychiatric hospital. Is there anything I can do to help?" Irate Caller: "YOU SORRY MOTHERFUCKER! AIN'T YOU LISTENING TO ANYTHING I SAY? TURN MY MOTHER FUCKING T.V. BACK ON!!!" Me: " All right sir. What's the problem?" Irate Caller: "I PAID FOR THIS FUCKING PAY-FOR-VIEW AND I WANT IT TURNED ON RIGHT FUCKING NOW!" Me: "Not a problem, Mister--what did you say your name was?" Irate Caller: "YOU KNOW! YOU GOT THAT GODDAM WHADDAYACALLIT, THAT PHONE TRACER! MY NAME IS JOHNSON!" Me: "Yes, of course, Mr. Johnson. Well, we have a MegaGiant Cable unit right in your neighborhood, and if you'll just go out by the street to flag him down, we'll have that premium pay-for-view and movie package turned back on immediately." Irate Caller: "That's better! Mother fuckers." <slams down phone> These idiots called up at least once a week. Some of the time, they actually listened, but most of the guys were so pissed off, they never even realized that they had dialed a wrong number. Sometimes we'd apologize profusely, and say shit like, "We are so sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Jones. Can we offer you the full premium first-run movie package, absolutely free to you, to make up for this inconvenience? We can? Great. Okay, go out to the street, and wait for our service unit. He should be there in no more than fifteen minutes to hook it up, absolutely free of charge."

Well, There ARE Marine Corps Groupies As well as groupies for other services. This is the basis for a bunch of movies, like "An Officer and a Gentleman", for instance. There are U.S. Navy SEAL bars (at least two, as I recall) where nobody else is welcome. The SEALs are mean as a snake, so if anybody else shows up at their bar and tries to get in, you get your ass kicked bad. I went in a bar with a friend of mine who was in UDT 11 (I think that's right---shit, it was like twenty-six years ago) and had a beer in the afternoon. The whole time we were there I was pretty nervous. The SEALs all know each other, so they would recognize an outsider instantly, especially a Marine (different haircut.) We had our bars as well. My favorite Marine Corps bar was "The Swallows' Inn" in the town of San Juan Capistrano, CA. I lived in Capistrano Beach, just up the road from Doheny State Beach and Dana Point. San Juan Capistrano is famous for the Mission San Juan Capistrano, which was part of the original mission system in California. Legend has it that the place was populated with swallows that sang all day as soon as the mission was consecrated, and that the swallows return to the mission every year on the same day. Right down the road from the mission is the Swallow's Inn, where bad ass hard-drinkin' local cowboys, Marines and bikers return every night to drink and raise hell. The local cops were all former Marines, so you had to be pretty far out of line to get arrested. A simple fight, or something like that, they usually just put you in handcuffs, drove you a few blocks away, bitched you out and turned you loose. I got pulled over once with beer awash on the floorboards of my car (like idiots, we sneaked glasses of beer out of the bar, and everybody set his glass down on the car floor) and the cop shined his flashlight on this sea of beer, and was like "Looks like you got a leak somewhere. Don't speed in my Dana Point, Marine." Of course, this bar attracts girls from all over the place. Not only WM's (Women Marines--they don't call them that anymore--more PC bullshit---we called them Split Tail Marines, but not to their faces.) There are some women who actually love Marines. (My wife has been married to two jarheads. She says she can spot a former Marine by the way he carries himself, the way he walks.) A lot of girls apparently really like the bad boy thing, so cowboys, bikers and jarheads are right up their alley. I knew a lot of guys who wound up getting laid by some chick right in the parking lot behind the Swallows'. All the girls aren't ho's by any means. Another Marine Corps friend of mine, who was a genuine bull-ridin' cowboy, met a girl there on a Friday night. They danced and got drunk on tequila shooters, then he drunkenly asked her to marry him. She was wasted too, so she said yes. They got in his truck and headed for Reno, NV to get married. Somewhere out in the desert, they sobered up. She said, "Hey, I like you, but you don't really have to marry me." He said, "Are you backing out? I'm a man of my word." She said, "No way. I will definately marry you if you say "yes." They went to Reno, got married, spent Saturday gambling and then headed back home. She said "My Mom lives in Irvine and is on a ranch there." He thought she meant her Mom worked on a horse ranch in Irvine. Turns out her Mom OWNED a horse ranch in Irvine. He married the only daughter of a millionaire horse-racing family. Absolutely true story.

That's Wierd Things must have improved since I was in the Marines. Everybody bitched piteously all the time that the girls in California hated Marines and that we couldn't even get common courtesy from grocery store cashiers and people like that. However, when the Sixth Fleet in San Diego went to sea, you could hear the cheering from the First Marine Division clear down in San Diego. Everybody rushed down to Broadway Street and got lucky. I love the Navy. Especially when they all go to WestPac and leave their girlfriends stuck in shithole apartments in Mission Beach, lonely and bored. Some people say that lonely Navy wives would put a broom on the porch if the coast was clear, LOL. I never actually found that to be true, but I did meet a number of very interesting young women in bars in San Diego when the Fleet was gone. I think it's because the Navy wives thought that entertaining some 19-year-old Marine for a night didn't really count as "cheating." Kind of like shooting fish in a barrel---there were so many of us, and we were all in top physical condition with a paycheck burning a hole in our pocket. Like a kid in the candy store---all of us strong young Marines---hard for the Navy girls to resist at least sampling a few.

I'm a computer lame ass AOL. I'm a lazy techno-phobe.

I smoked for 13 years Age 13 til 26. It makes me wince, thinking how stupid I must have looked at age thirteen, hanging around the bowling alley or the movie theatre with a butt hanging out of my mouth. We thought we were so cool. I rolled my own smokes when I was a full-time tramp. It was cheaper. Plus, it was kind of social. Somebody was always looking for a cigarette, and rolling his own cigarette usually wasn't what he had in mind. The old guys all smoked tailor-mades. Or a pipe. I do miss rolling my own smokes. But I don't miss coughing up globs of green shit every morning. I don't miss fiending for nicotine and being broke and out of tobacco. I don't miss being winded and breathless. My mom smoked for forty years. She started during WWII, when she was in high school. Back in those days, colleges were usually segregated by sex (as well as race,) and in the thirties a new idea came along "Co-education." that meant boys and girls going to the same colleges, a radical idea, in it's day. Girls who went to co-educational schools were called "co-eds." It had a sort of sassy connotation, sort of a "smart, sexy young girl who is unsupervised." Mom told me once "I started smoking because I thought it made me sort of look older--people might think I was a co-ed." Today, she's in a hospital on a ventilator, with a tracheostomy in her throat, barely able to breathe, on oxygen. She is fed through a tube that goes through the abdominal wall into her stomach. She lost fifteen pounds in the last three months, and everybody is worried sick about that trend. She cannot drink water, or eat regular food, or even swallow anything, because of the breathing tube. Her lungs are permenantly damaged beyond repair from smoking. Every goddamned breath is a gasp. Go ahead. Smoke all you want. Fuck the laws. Fuck the anti-smoking people. Nobody has a right to tell you that you can't smoke. Every decision has it's CONSEQUENCES. My mom never imagined, back in 1942, when she was a beautiful young high school girl in the peak of health, that when she lit that first cigarette it was going to put her where she is today. She was young, and healthy, and beautiful, and who knew? The war might last forever. Go ahead---"Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco!" Victory cigarettes were practically free. The boys all smoked Camels. All the boys in her class that smoked are dead. Cancer. Heart disease. Emphysema. Atherosclerosis. In my Mom's room, facing her bed, is a picture of her and my Dad, when they were dating. She looks about seventeen. My Dad is skinny as a rail, and wearing his Army Air Force uniform. They are both smoking.

No Problem, Bro Just type "Nicaragua and industrial and commercial and business connections" into your search engine, hit the "search" button and you'll find out about pretty much everything there is to know about it. I can't recall too many Nicaraguan graff writers on here, but there's gotta be at least some. There's a shitload of Los Angeles street gangsters down there, because they got deported. So I figure, WTF, where there's street life, there's GRAFFITTI. Where there's graffitti, there's got to be graffitti writers. Maybe you'll meet some on here. Where's Esai? He knows about some of this, I'll bet.

FTRA and Libby It's been a long, long time since I set foot in Libby, MT. All I can say is that Libby was the birthplace of the FTRA. I doubt seriously that there is much of an FTRA presence there on an on-going basis. The Late 80's and the 90's were the heyday of the FTRA, although they do still exist, it has been quite a while since I ran into an FTRA rider. The police pressure up on the Hi-Line and the investigations into the so-called "Sidetrack Murders" for which Robert "Sidetrack" Silveria (a self-described leader in the FTRA) was charged, tried and convicted; and the investigation and arrest of Dog Man Tony really drove the FTRA underground to a great extent. There was a time when members of the FTRA were required by their code to wear their colors (a bandana rolled cowboy style around the neck, and closed with a silver concho) but these days I don't see anybody wearing these colors. Back in the day, the O.G.'s from the "original" FTRA, up on the BN Hi-Line, wore black bandanas. The cops even called them "The Black Bandanas," or "black bandana hobos" before the existance of FTRA came to light. With the heat on upon the Hi-Line, they began moving west and south. The blue-bandana-FTRA began riding east from San Francisco on the old Frisco Route, the "central corridor." The red-bandana-FTRA rode the west coast and the Sunset Route, east towards Texas and the deep South. After Sidetrack was captured, the cops went nuts arresting anybody and everybody who looked the slightest bit capable of being a so-called "railroad killer." A lot of them went to prison for stuff like trafficking in narcotics or being a felon in possession of a firearm. That's when the Old FTRA took off their colors. Many of them retired and became homeguards. The police hassle is their OWNED DAMNED FAULT. Tramps rode the Hi-Line unmolested by the cops for years ands years. Montana was almost a haven for tramps back in the 70's and 80's. It wasn't until FTRA became a problem that the cops went crazy arresting tramps. Some of the well-known tramps today are "Ex-FTRA". (This is a contradiction in terms. There's no such thing as "ex" FTRA. The rule is "Once in, never out." No matter where they go, or how high they may rise in society, their old buddies in FTRA consider them "still obligated." This is a standard mafia deal, almost all gangs and gang-like organizations have this provisio.) There is allegedly a "new" FTRA. I don't know much about them, other than that the members are supposed to be much younger. The O.G's are in their fifties now. I doubt that you have anything to fear from them. It's the younger guys, in their twenties and thirties that I would be cautious of. This thing about the FTRA being racist is only partially true. I know a few WELL-KNOWN tramps who have good friends who are black tramps, and the white guys are (or were) FTRA. It's not so much race as culture. Inside prison, there's a race war going on, and the color of your skin is your uniform. A lot of ex-convicts have a very racist view of the world. A lot of FTRA guys are ex-convicts. It's more of a coincidence rather than an organizational principle. I have met several FTRA guys in the last couple of years. They didn't seem to be any more or less racist than any other uneducated white guy. About the same, I'd say. Which is to say, prejudiced, but not actively murderous towards minorities. I don't think they would seek out minority people to be friends with, but if they met someone who was black that they got along with, their attitude would be "No, I don't like niggers. But Tyrone is different. He's okay, he's not like the rest of them." (It's a paradox, but one with which many Southern black people are familiar.) Mind you, I'm certainly not excusing racist behavior, but you asked me if I thought you'd have trouble with them. I doubt that you would. Probably won't even see any. A bigger fear, from my viewpoint, considering the police attitude in Montana, would be getting arrested for being in a train yard. If you get caught on a train, it's an automatic 90 days in County. Or so I've been told. Check it out, and give us a report why don't you?

SCUMDOG Go read "Hobos, Tramps and Homeless Bums," on the Trainspotting Forum. See you at Britt, LOL.

LOL This reminds me of those awkward things that happen when you are in high school or somewhere--the head cheerleader or the captain of the football team apears to be waving hello to you, then when you wave back, you realize that he was actually waving to some other beautiful person behind you, and you try to like pretend that you were scratching your ear or something, but "too late," they see you and realize you are a dumb ass, LOL. I always hated that. Still do, LOL. (Kettiecat gets to play head cheerleader. Oats gets to play Captain of the football team. I get to play "oafish fucking guy with a pocket protector." LOL!)

Sure, why not? Do you actually live in San Francisco? I used to live about a block from Dolores Park, right off 16th Street. Then I moved to the Avenues, when I got married. My kid was born at the hospital on Parnassus Avenue. I liked San Francisco, but it was like living in the middle of fucking Disneyland, what with all the tourists. By the way, your enemy, the Fun Crusher is one outstandingly good-looking woman. What is it about that girl that I find so attractive? She's a knockout, most def.

What's race got to do with it? Try and spell better, okay? Poor spelling ruins your point.

Kettiecat My bust---I wrote the address wrong, I was in a hurry. Rsaxon50@hotmail.com

Those of you who have purchased Altamont Press railroad timetables for different areas of the United States already know how cool they are. I bought a Texas Region timetable today. VERY VERY COOL. It has maximum speeds posted, the mile post marker of various junctions, spurs, sidetracks, etc. It has the stations listed, along with their CP number, the operating rules under which that section of track operates, siding lengths in yards (Hello! Graff commandos! Siding lengths!) and miles that the station is from the division point or railroad's main headquarters. Mine also has four maps, one of all Texas railroads, one of Houston railroads, and two smaller maps, one of Dallas rails, the other of Fort Worth. Most interesting of all to me were the page of railroad "Roadway signs" and Rule 9.1 Signal Aspects, including Union Pacific, BNSF, and KCS. VERY VERY COOL. READ AND UNDERSTAND. "Share the Knowledge."

KETTIECAT I didn't like that gun comment one fucking bit. Email me at Rsaxon50@hotmail.com Sorry---wrote it in a hurry. I care, and I want to hear whatever you got to say. KaBar.

Crew Change Guide One thing I don't think I've mentioned before on here is the Crew Change Guide. There is a book, a home-made, hand-xerox'ed book, called the Crew Change Guide, that is published once or twice a year by a select few tramps. I understand it is actually copywrited, but it seems to me that would be hard to enforce. I think they copywrited it to prevent a particular individual from publishing it (as he apparently threatened to do) for money. He apparently wanted to use a communally-produced CCG as a base, and edit it some, and then publish it under his own name in order to produce a source of personal revenue. This really pissed off a number of tramps in TU63, and this guy is on their shit list bigtime. They have discovered a couple of places where he jungles up and found personal notes and evidence he was trying to put this plan into action, and took steps to prevent it. The CCG is produced by tramps, for tramps. It is not intended to be published to the general public. It is not intended to be published on the Internet. In fact, each time I have seen a copy, the guy giving it to me made me swear that I would protect it, that I would not reproduce it for sale and that I would not put it on the Internet. As you guys know, tramps hold legal contracts in low regard. Legal contracts are pretty much worthless in the hobo world. However---if you give somebody your hand on a deal, you goddamned better well honor your word. Since I swore I would not publish it on the net, I can't give you an actual example. But I can give you an idea of what it is like. They use abbreviations, like "SBD" is southbound, and "BTN" is between, and BLVD is boulevard, etc. PT/N or PT/S is "positioned to the north" or "positioned to the south." "GEO SBD" is "geographically south bound," which means that a train leaving the yard "WBD" might initially be "GEO SBD." Here's an imaginary sample: "LOS ANGELES (BNSF) TANGIERS YARD: On SE side of LA, stretching into Vernon/City of Commerce. YD is pt/s of E. 45th St. From INT E. Washington BLVD & Altlantic BLVD (a #116 Bus will get you here from the Metro Light Rail station at Pico Navarro St. coming from DT,) go S. on Atlantic BLVD about 3 BL to RRO (railroad overpass). E throat of YD is back towards W. (towards DT) under the I-522 overpass. Some trains reduce speed here as they approach the signal bridge 0.5 mi E. of you here. Long Beach bound trains do not reduce speed, and are rolling too fast to catch. If you cross the high iron (main line) BEWARE of the security camera visable on a high pole SE of the I-522 overpass. It is observing tracks that feed the HP container cargo SDTRK headed to Port of Long Beach. Stay off the gravel road next to this SDTRK. There is easy access on both N. and S. ends of the yard, but E. and W. sides are well fenced, with concertina barbed wire around the HP hot cargo yard. Trains generally S&S (stop & stand) about 0.25 mi W of signal bridge. It's an easy catch at night, be very cautious in daylight. Rumor has it that the bulls in this YD employ NVE (night vision equipment) but it is so well-lighted that this is probably not true." Obviously, if you live in LA, this^ is a complete fantasy. I just wrote it to give you an idea of what the CCG is like, so for for pete's sake, don't write me back bitching that you can't find this mythical Tangiers Yard, and that I'm obvious a nark, or a fraud or whatever. IT'S ONLY AN EXAMPLE, OK? If by some chance, you ever come into possession of a CCG, you are honor bound to protect it's contents. If you don't want it, you may give it away, but only to another genuine tramp, and only if you first elicit from him a promise "upon his honor" that he will not compromise the CCG. YOU MAY NOT SELL IT and you MAY NOT PUBLISH IT ON THE INTERNET. Like I said above^^^ there's different kinds of people riding the rails. Some of them are decent people with a strong sense of honor and self-worth. Some are not. BE A STRAIGHT-UP TRAMP. Sometimes CCG's are obtainable at tramp gatherings. It's sort of a "you gotta know somebody" deal. They generally cost between $10 to $15, to cover the cost of xeroxing them.