Freight Train Diary / Freight Train Field Recordings
I first started hopping trains in the USA and Canada when I was 19 years old. Sometimes traveling with close friends, but more often than not alone, I was prolific in recording all of my strange, exciting, and magical experiences with journals, audio equipment, super8, and cheap film cameras. I rarely met other women train hoppers, much less other women traveling by themselves or people of color.
After nearly ten years of accumulated documentation I decided to make this. The zine includes 72 pages of train hopping stories interspersed with journal entries, retrospective flashbacks, color photo fold-outs, vintage train maps, and a glossary. Field recordings and rail songs, dubbed off old mini-disc tapes and Zoom H2 flash drives are lovingly collected on a limited edition CD. New third edition includes two bonus super8 clips filmed while riding through the Feather River Canyon and somewhere in Wyoming, re-applying make-up in a motel bathroom.