Railroad Semantics: Train Hopping Across Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, and Oregon

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In the fourth Railroad Semantics collection, Aaron takes you along on an epic train journey through desolate stretches of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. His personal accounts of train hopping are paired with newspaper clippings, photos, rail yard graffiti, and ephemera to fill in the story. In this volume, Aaron survives encounters with police, railroad workers, and hipsters posing as hobos. He drinks under overpasses, is injured alone in the desert, and even takes a legitimate, ticketed Amtrak ride.

Reviews

Praise for Railroad Semantics
I am happy to see Mr. Dactyl in the right kind of print: Something to slip into a daypack. May he have many more beautiful and infamous rail adventures and tell us all about them, before or after he loses his legs. --William T. Vollmann

Freight trains were a huge part of my life for ten years. I painted them, studied them, benched them and got excited every time I found a new set of tracks to explore. I never rode a train or honestly had the desire. But every time I come across someone who has good stories I sit mesmerized, listening. Railroad Semantics finds those stories and presents them in a page-turning manner. Making books like this is a labor of love and the creator really has outdone himself. --Roger Gastman, Freight Train Graffiti and Street World

Aaron's travelogue is excellently written and engaging. Even the rather dull parts of waiting hours for the train to disembark are full of introspective thought and observation. --Razorcake

Needless to say, when we came across this zine we needed to learn more. Train-hopping ain't dead-It's thriving, it's raw, it's adventurous . . . it's freedom. --Mass Appeal

Like the markings on railcars that train hoppers leave for each other, Aaron is simply sending a message to later travelers, warning them what to look out for by relating what he encountered in different yards. Credit must be given to Dactyl for bringing it alive with a writing style that mixes enough railroad lingo with some pretty vivid passages of the scenery, the people and the towns he encounters along the way. --Reglar Wigler

Aaron Dactyl's living hobo history periodical/book includes adventures, diaries, clippings, and fascinating graphics --Roctober Reviews

Author Bio

Aaron Dactyl is an adventurer, railroad hobo, and train enthusiast. He regularly travels by hopping trains and lives in Eugene, OR.