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At The Jungle In The Desert, Combat Railfans Have One-Track Minds.
By Dave Irwin
YOU HAVE TO seriously love trains to party with the Combat
Railfans.
Not an "I-rode-a-train-once" affection. No, for the
Combat Railfans, you need a deeply obsessive love that can result
in legal action and bodily injury. Then they'll let you hang out
in their world.
Railfans, or trainspotters, look for, photograph, discuss and
generally fixate on anything related to trains. The Combat Railfans
are the bad boys of Arizona trainspotters. Most railfans are as
exciting as bird watchers. The very name, "Railway Historical
Society," tells you how much fun it would be to party with
them. But the Combat Railfans have managed to combine trains,
pyrotechnics, camaraderie and beer into something unique.
Since 1989, the Combat Railfans have gathered to celebrate the
New Year on an isolated patch of desert along a curve of the Union
Pacific tracks. They call it "Jungle In The Desert,"
after the old hobo jungles. It started with four fanatics. This
year, some 65 people, ranging from freight hopping punks to Depression
hoboes to families with dogs and kids in RVs, gathered to share
a beer, watch trains with something approaching mysticism and
set off fireworks for themselves and the train crews.
Following vague directions, we arrive after dark Friday night.
On a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, we find a group of people
gathered around two cars. "Spark Plug" one of the original
fanatics, welcomes us. He and others are on a mercy mission: a
local woman, her mother and three kids, with a flat tire. "Iron
Cowboy," a skinny kid from Oklahoma who hopped freight trains
from California to get here, offers to ride us in since he knows
the way.
At one time, as many as 3 million Americans were riding the rails
illegally. Today, the number of freight hoppers is estimated to
be around 3,000.
The camp is at the base of a small hill. Hidden from the road,
tents, RVs and cars are scattered among the saguaros and palo
verde. A bonfire blazes, a bluegrass trio is playing old songs
by a tree, kids and dogs wander through the night and a group
of people sit on lounge chairs. A kitchen is set up on the rise,
complete with gas lighting, to feed the multitudes. The fence
paralleling the track is decorated with some 30 colored kerosene
lanterns, adding a surreal element of glowing green, red and yellow.
"Trainman," another original and a Department of Transportation
computer analyst, busies himself in the kitchen. "We just
want people who love trains like we do to come here and have fun,"
he says, dicing vegetables.
"Westbound," the shout goes up. In the distance, the
sound of tons of steel moving on the rails can be heard. People
line the fence. As the train nears, fireworks are launched, filling
the darkness with exploding light. As it thunders by, everyone
waves, some take flash photos and others launch more fireworks.
Shouting over the noise, the Railfans discuss the train, the number
of units (engines) and types of cars (a high balling piggyback
with some tankers), speculating about the destination. The engineer,
high atop the lead unit, waves and blows the horn long and lonesome.
All weekend, every train that goes by acknowledges the Combat
Railfans.
The original group was born on a railfan quest near San Manuel,
as they discovered that quietly trespassing on company property
yielded better photos of trains. They wore camouflage and struck
guerrilla-like. They were immediately ostracized by the staid,
traditional railfan community.
"That's just not the way we do our railfanning in this country,"
Spark Plug intones in a solemn satirical voice, taking another
sip. During the week, Spark Plug designs and constructs model
train installations.
The event has evolved over the years, as have the pyrotechnics.
At one point they were launching 55 gallon drums, and once even
launched a 19-inch televison. Now with more of a family element,
it's settled down to batteries of illegal rockets, and occasionally,
strips of firecrackers tossed into the fire, though always with
fair warning of "fire in the hole!" to allow those sitting
nearest time to tumble backwards.
Lee, a 43-year-old anarchist/squatter from California who also
rode freight to attend, calls the gathering "a temporary
autonomous zone," a place outside the law. He's been riding
the rails for a dozen years and publishes a fanzine of rail stories
called, "There's Something About A Train." "I love
riding freight," he says. "You're seeing the backside
of America." It's his first Jungle in the Desert. "This
is great," he says with a grin. Before heading in, he partied
with some crustypunks in Tucson, drinking under a bridge. His
traveling companions are Chris, a 6-foot-5 college student majoring
in opera, and Ariel, a silent Israeli waif traveling the States.
To facilitate their quest, the Railfans set up a train detector
on the hill, monitoring the rail frequencies, complete with amplifier
and loudspeakers. Whenever a train trips the switch on the tracks,
a voice wails into the night: "SP Detector. Eastbound, milepost
eight-six-four, no defects, no defects," and the pyrotechnics
crew heads for their stations.
Saturday, Trainman makes chicken noodle soup in a 10-gallon vat,
using his own handmade noodles. "The Unaplumber," a
Phoenix plumber who laid the gas lines, begins preparing the fire
pit for Sunday's feast, burying pounds and pounds of meat. Since
the bluegrass trio has not returned, Chris sings operatic excerpts
around the campfire.
In the hours between trains, beer flows, tales both true and
tall are told, friendships made. Talk includes freight hopping,
rare locomotives, merits of various routes, "bulls (railroad
security) I have known," and the coldest night spent on the
rails.
"Ad Man" a former advertising executive in from Minnesota,
waxes poetic. "You're riding up on the deck of a flatcar
and it's getting colder," he says. "You've got that
cold steel, so you roll out your sleeping bag and you climb in.
And it's the harshest of environments to be in, and you snuggle
down into your sleeping bag and you just kind of look up and you
feel safe, cozy and happy. And you say to yourself, 'Well, I can't
think of any place I'd rather be.' "
Late that night, while Ad Man sleeps peacefully by the fire,
Trainman slips a raw beef hoof found among the meat scraps into
Ad Man's sleeping bag, while a dozen of us make bizarre mooing
sounds around him. Sunday morning and Ad Man thinks he had a really
strange dream, until he finds the hoof.
Everyone helps with the final feast. The atmosphere is mellow
and relaxed, like the preparation of a family dinner after church.
Around 2 in the afternoon, we fill our plates with tender beef,
beans, salads, vegetables and desserts. Now things get a little
sad: everyone can see the end, though no one says anything, except
how good the food is.
"This is about as ugly as we get now," Spark Plug concedes.
"We cook for a bunch of folks. Once in awhile, we ride freight.
We drink beer. We have the fireworks. But this is the worst we
do."
"We don't want regular people around us," he continues.
"If you're a little off the wall, if you're a little twirly,
that's the kind of people we want to hang with, 'cause they're
more fun. If you sit and talk to anybody here, they're not going
to tell you about their 9-to-5 job, they're not going to complain
about their wife and kids and house and mortgage and we really
ought to do something about that Clinton thing. You're not going
to hear that here. You're going to hear, 'Westbound! Let's go!'
"
As we drive out in the late afternoon, we find Iron Cowboy hitching
near I-10. We drive him to Tucson and drop him off near the UP
yard. Thanking us, he disappears, looking for a freight train
to carry him home.
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