(The Associated Press distributed the following article on May 30.)
HAMMOND, La. — An oak tree near the downtown Hammond train depot serves as shade for a group of Baton Rouge-area folks every Saturday. They set up lawn chairs under the tree about 60 feet from the rusty brown train tracks that stretch through the city.
Then they sit and wait.
“If you don’t have patience, you ain’t gonna be a good railfanner,” said Tom Blackwell of Denham Springs, president of the southeast Louisiana chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.
“Railfanners” are people who love to watch trains.
And different members of Blackwell’s club go to Hammond every Saturday to do just that.
During a recent Saturday railfanning session, 16 of the Southeast Louisiana chapter’s 45 members showed up at their oak tree, starting at 10:30 a.m.
The first train did not pass until noon.
So, the group does what it does every Saturday between trains.
They chitchat.
And the talk is not necessarily about trains.
One married couple talk and complain to another railfanner about traffic congestion in Baton Rouge. Another railfanner, Helena Blackwell, reads the newspaper.
And reading the newspaper outside is a challenge because of the wind.
She’s reading the television listings out loud and collecting some laughs in the process, as she tells the group their Saturday night choices on the tube.
But not everyone seems so patient.
John Fortner, 53, of Watson was the first railfanner to arrive on this Saturday just before 10:30 a.m. Although there’s a lawn chair set out for him, he has not been able to sit since he arrived.
Tom Blackwell paces slowly, too. With his hands in his safari-looking khaki shorts, Blackwell walks close to the train tracks, tilts his body toward the tracks and looks far off into the distance.
But Blackwell doesn’t admit he’s looking for trains.
“Just looking to see what the sun is gonna do,” Blackwell said.
The railfanners are a sort of anti-NASCAR crowd.
They bring their own lunches to the oak tree for the day. There is not a beer can in sight, just water bottles and soft drinks.
Finally, just before noon, a scanner the group sets up each Saturday signals them that a train is on the way.
The loud, slightly muffled sound of railroad workers yapping shoots out of the scanner box.
That’s when the railfanners start to move in their seats and rustle a bit. Some start getting their digital cameras ready. Others get out of their seats and start walking toward the tracks.
Then the train comes.
It’s a Canadian National freight train with two locomotives — an Illinois Central locomotive and a Wisconsin Central locomotive.
The railfanners are all now out of their seats and standing close — maybe 30 feet from the tracks — as the train passes by.
Some just watch and others point their cameras.
And in an instant, like a snowflake that eventually hits the ground, the train is gone.
They may wait two more hours before another train passes.
Brendan Brosnan, 47, of Baton Rouge, said if the group is lucky, the railfanners will see five or six trains on any given Saturday.
“My Mom said I loved trains since I was old enough to pull myself up to the Lionel train set table we had,” Brosnan said.
Brosnan wears one of those stereotypical railroad engineer hats with thin blue stripes.
Blackwell said many members of the club started out as kids who had model train sets when they were growing up.
The National Railway Historical Society was founded in 1935 and has more than 19,000 members in 170 chapters all over the country and the United Kingdom.
Tom Blackwell said the Southeast Louisiana chapter started in 1967, and he joined in 1982.
When asked why people sit around all day just to watch trains, Blackwell almost sounds annoyed.
“Why do people play golf? Why do people hunt or fish? They do it because they enjoy it,” Blackwell said.
It’s a little after noon.
According to the train schedule, an Amtrak train is supposed to be passing by in a little less than two hours.
Some of the railfanners take a break to go get more food.
Others start to shoot the breeze again.
It’s just another Saturday for railfanners waiting for the last caboose to disappear.