Why Ferguson Should Worry Railfans

You may think that the events unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, have little to do with being a casual railfan or serious historian. In my opinion, that would be unwise. Take away the violence, and there are disturbing parallels.

Over a few decades of being a railfan and picture taker, I lost count of how many times I was told to a) leave railroad property, b) go get permission from someone, or c) just be careful.

Once in a while, a railroad special agent would get a little brusque or choose not to understand what I was trying to do. But for the most part, there were no issues. A White guy with a camera and notepad didn't seem like much of a security threat.

Then 9/11 happened, and I pretty much quit being a railfan. The entire climate changed dramatically. It just wasn't worth the hassle to try to take train pictures, or even watch trains anymore. Too many people with a badge seemed to think that they were defending freedom, God and Country by harassing anybody with a camera anywhere near a railroad. Of course, they were getting their orders from somewhere up the food chain. It brought to mind the old adage that "to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." I regret now that I stopped.

Both the railroad industry and the vast law enforcement/surveillance community have been slow to grasp the concept that the more "good guys" out there--people with an interest in railroading being part of a supportive community--the less likely it would be that "bad guys" could get away with anything.

That was my opinion many years ago, when I did a stint with a large defense contractor working on the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison project, the plan to mount nuclear missiles on railroad cars so that they could move about on the national railroad network. The Soviets had a similar truck-mounted capability, which scared the Hell out of us. We wanted something equally scary to them.

One of our conclusions was that if "Ivan got weird" (as the old expression went--a kind of gallows humor), we wanted as many people as possible out watching trains and poking around the railroad. That would make it much harder for Soviet saboteurs to cause mischief. Of course, the intent was never really to have nukes cruising out among the freight trains--but that is another story.

Don Phillips, Steve Barry, and other brave souls have been on the front lines defending our rights to take pictures of trains and enjoy railroading from public spaces. That is pretty much the same issue involved in a spate of recent cases of law enforcement overreach--people arrested, assaulted, or shot for minor, or even imagined, infractions.

Cops in Omaha, for example, have harassed people for taking pictures of a downtown bank building--from public streets and sidewalks. A university professor in Arizona recently got thrown to the ground, roughed up, and arrested for walking in a street on campus. The sidewalk was closed because of construction, and she unwisely delayed showing identification as the cop demanded.

Increasingly pedestrians are being required to produce identification--except that, at least for the time being in the U.S., a) no license is required to walk in pubic places, b) we don't have "identity cards" or "official papers" as many countries do, and c) no law compels anyone to reveal their identity without good reason. We learned that from the old Dragnet radio show.

Increasingly, police seem to have very different concepts of our rights as citizens, and their prerogative to exercise power, than the rest of us. And there are now so many different agencies with coercive power and the ability to make our lives miserable. What would you do when standing with a camera on a public bridge over a railroad--and local law enforcement decided you are acting suspiciously? What if he or she demanded that you hand over your SD card? (That is the equivalent of ripping the film out of the camera back--it still happens.)

In and around Washington (which now is a miserable place to be a railfan out in public) there are over three dozen police entities. You might be surprised by how many ways there are to get crosswise with some variety of law enforcement anywhere near a railroad, almost no matter where you happen to be.

And in case you don't know where Ferguson, Missouri is, think of the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library, part of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and one of the most comprehensive railroad libraries in the country. When I do research at the Barriger Library, I usually eat in Ferguson. It is the neighborhood just to the north of campus. I surely won't be eating there any more.

Twenty five years ago, when I was helping take the B&O Railroad Museum from a corporate department to a private not-for-profit foundation, CSX was trimming its route miles in a massive "housekeeping" program. The old B&O was disappearing at an accelerating rate. One of my tasks was to document whatever I could before it went away.

I would often go out on weekends to take pictures and identify artifacts or bits that (hopefully) would be sent to the Museum. Local Division officials knew that I would be out and about, and they almost always understood what I was trying to do. There were an awful lot of railfans working for Chessie/CSX.

One Saturday or Sunday, I was following the B&O's old "Wheeling, Pittsburgh & Baltimore" line between Wheeling, WV and Glenwood Yard, just south of Pittsburgh. It was a typical couple of days of getting as many pictures as I could, at as many places as I could get to. It wasn't photography, and it certainly wasn't railfanning--it was simply taking documentation snapshots before the planned abandonment of the railroad made it all go away.

Somewhere near Washington, Pa., at a place on the map called "Laboratory," I recall standing on the tracks near a grade crossing, getting shots of the railroad eastward and westward. I didn't care what was on either side--it looked like all trees to me.

Then a car--or, maybe an early SUV--pulled up, and some sort of cop got out and demanded to know what I was doing. I told him that I was taking pictures of the railroad, for the railroad.

He told me that I couldn't do that--this was restricted territory. I told him that I believed that I could, because this was railroad property--and I had explicit permission to be there and take photographs. We happened to be standing on Chessie System right-of-way at the time.

Naturally, he threatened to arrest me. I wondered out loud what authority he had to do so, seeing as how we were on railroad property. Things got a little tense as we worked out just whose jurisdiction owned the coercive authority at that point. Could he compel me to leave railroad property? Did he have any legitimate power to restrict my ability to take pictures? Just what was up the hill at "Laboratory, Pa." that gave him the right to run me off my own railroad?

Would I have to walk to Pittsburgh--remaining on Chessie property--to escape arrest?

I admit I got annoyed, and suggested that he could arrest me if he chose to--but that my one phone call would be to the Chessie Division offices in Pittsburgh, and that he could sort it out with the Chessie Police. They knew I was out there.

It wasn't a bluff, exactly. Local officials understood what I was doing, and very senior folks in Cleveland and Jacksonville had approved the project. But I wondered later--What if this chap with a badge and a gun had an attack of testosterone poisoning? What if I had, at the moment he pulled up, been on public property instead of on railroad property? Would anyone at the Division office in Pittsburgh have answered the desk phone on a Saturday afternoon? This was, after all, a quarter century ago, when we were not so connected.

The "officer" (I never figured out what agency or entity he worked for, or why it was a "restricted area") finally told me to get on the highway and keep going, or he would make sure I had real trouble. I took his advice.

I was lucky that day, and that is why Ferguson resonates. The violence and looting there is despicable and self defeating, but almost beside the point. The shooting of an apparently unarmed suspect (who admittedly was acting badly) is one in a growing list of incidents in which police of one sort or another come down hard on folks who maybe don't deserve it. If that Laboratory incident had unfolded in today's climate, things may have turned out very differently.

It has been quiet for a while, but there will be another round of railfan/railroad photographer harassment. Someone will get nailed trying to take a train picture, or find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time according to somebody with a badge and an attitude. For train folks, this issue will not go away--at least, not as long as courageous people insist on exercising their rights to watch, photograph, and enjoy railroading from public places.

The quote is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but no one knows where it really comes from: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." Another way to think of this is the muscle metaphor--if you don't exercise your rights, you lose them.

Follow the Ferguson case, and imagine what its underlying issues might mean in a railroad/railfan context. Don and Steve and others have paved the way. In theory, we have a sort of "Railfan Bill of Rights." Still, we ought to be talking about this at conferences and meetings, refining our legal arguments, and preparing for the next challenges.

To paraphrase a standard railroad directive, we need to "proceed protecting ourselves." Know your rights, and be prepared to defend them. But be careful out there. 

Read The Photographer's Right.