I’m now a train fan & boat nerd!

Maybe you're just deeply boring?

Here’s a cam for freighters.......

Even as a child, I found locomotives fascinating. No, you are not alone in your appreciation, ROP, and I thank you for reminding me of simpler, calm times and pursuits.

^^oops, typo in my comment R3: OP, not ROP.

I love the sound of a train. When I was little, we could always hear a train track off in the background - very comforting.

Now I truly get excited when I hear a train horn.

It's amazing and disturbing what they have channels devoted to showing on youtube. I accidentally clicked on one recommendation and am now constantly offered "live feeding" channels where they show people feeding various monitor lizards, African frogs, and piranha being fed LIVE animals - mice, rats, other frogs, hamsters. Who knew that cobras eat whole, large pythons.

Apparently, our domestics cats are murderous villains. They will apparently kill and eat rabbits, fur, bones, skull, fluffy ears and cotton tail and all.

It's all vaguely horrifying in a way that watching lions on Planet Earth or National Geographic is not for some reason.

I think I may need to watch some trains or other calming videos for a while.

I get made fun of for being a train nerd. There is some thing about them that I respond to a very deep level.

Sending this one out to you, OP.

There’s a nice freighter @ The cam at R2

Here’s another cam view a little further north.

Streamliners at Speed! (Volume 1)

Here's a train for you OP

There’s something about a train...

Tnx R8 & R11!

Check this out! It’s pretty sweet!

[quote]Or maybe I’m just losing my mind?

Do you sometimes stand in the middle of the floor -- not going left? Not going right?

I’m with you, OP. I love watching trains. When this craziness ends, I’m gonna book a trip on Amtrak’s “Vermonter.”

I lived at the end of a train platform in Japan. My balcony overlooked the station. Every Saturday morning train otakus set u big cameras right outside my window to film the trains coming into the station. It was weird. They were weird. You are one of them, OP!

Like this. They were regular trains. I guess they were very photogenic.

There was an edited vid of the Canadian Pacific set to Mishima by Philip Glass: stunning; it got taken down - anyone got a copy to share?

This is the time of year when I sleep with my windows open. I live in a semi-rural area.

A car assembly plant is about 12 miles away from my house and the rain line servicing the plant is about 2 miles away.

The railroad ships the cars, vans, and trucks headed to the port for export most evenings in the wee hours.

I can barely hear the locomotives rumble and warning horns from my bed.

I like the sounds.

R16 I am NOT one of those people! I agree that is weird and a bit overboard. All I do is chill at home and watch these live streams on my YouTube App on my television. It’s really cool to see these ships and trains on a big screen TV rather than on the tablet or phone.

While I’m here, here’s another YouTube ship watching cam!

You can also track ships and see when they might be cruising by the cam.

I don't think you're weird at all, OP. I'm not a train fan, but the freighter videos are interesting. Thanks for link.

I have been known to watch traffic cams. Late at night, I sometimes surf live cams of small town downtowns. It's fun, watching those completely empty quiet streets and trying to figure out as much as you can about the town just from the cam. Then, a single car drives by or - more mysterious and stimulating to the imagination - a single pedestrian hurries along the empty, dark street. Where are they going, out in the middle of nowhere at that time of night?

Long trains are nice except for when you need to cross the tracks. Do you like graffiti on trains?

I like long trains entering dark tunnels.

I'm terrified of high bridges, like they have in the American South. I remember driving from Houston to Galveston in 1970, going over some very high bridge. I already have vertigo. Scares the shikkies out of me.

I agree R25, there's Skyway in Tampa used to scare me going up but also coming down. The fucking maniac drivers in FL made no concessions and were all over the place, interweaving hundreds of feet up over the bay and speeding!

I have gotten obsessed with British narrowboat youtubers. There's a whole subculture of them out there!

I love trains too, especially once I spent a lot of time in Flagstaff being held up at train crossings by them. Well, I learned to love them. Now that I moved away, the webcams bring back the excitement of the huge machinery without the frustration. Be aware, though, that RR pros call us 'foamers!'

Here's a boat.

When I was a kid we put coins on the rails so the trains could flatten them out. We stayed really close to the track too, to watch the flattening. The train just hooted as it approached, careering past at full tilt.

Planespotter here but in a different era I would have been a train geek

I love the cab view videos.

[bold]Brave Dave's Big Fat Freight Hop[/bold]

You might like this video series, Op. The guy freight hops from Montreal to Vancouver.

R24 I see what you did there. Bad boy!

WTF is freight hopping in the pandemic of 2020? It sounds like it spreads the rona. I live at least 5 miles from the nearest track but sometimes I can hear them choo-choo at 5am if the wind is right in winter; so I suppose the rona is drifing over on the sound. Better seal the windows.

R32 you might like this channel......

Trains aren't my thing, OP. But prior to Covid-19, I would have laughed in the face of anyone who professed to watching birds. Yep, you guessed it, quarantine has turned me into a bird watcher.

You can also rewind these live YouTube cams 12 hours to see previous ships that have come through various cams. I’m on the West Coast so I like to rewind in the morning to watch ships go by at sunrise in the eastern time zone. Here’s a spreadsheet that tells you when ships have passed by the cam.

And here is one more cam in Algonac, MI about 15 minutes south of Marine City......

Visiting the U.K. over the past four years I discovered I love seeing train pass through a station at high speed. It gives you quite a rush when you're so close - but not too close. That would be unwise.

I've included a link that includes many of these trains rushing through stations. Not all the trains shown are super fast.

Check out this video R40. The last train is still in development but it’s top speed is supposed to be 375 mph! I don’t think that’s possible.

We did that too r30!

Railways Italy,High Speed Trains

I was in Italy last year and was impressed with how fast, clean and smooth the trains from Rome to Naples were.

It sure gets cold in Duluth!

This is the Arthur M. Anderson. The last ship to see the Edmund Fitzgerald before she sank in Lake Superior in 1975. She later went out on a rescue mission for the Fitzgerald.

Nice, R45! Do freighter arrivals always draw so many observers in Duluth, or was this a special occasion?

Also, the white hotel visible next to the ship channel and Aerial Lift Bridge toward the end of the video is the South Pier Inn. It looks like a pretty nice hotel, with some rooms having an amazing view of the bridge and harbor.

Since this is a quintessentially nerdy thread, I might as well go whole-nerd and admit that I think going to Duluth and the Arrowhead region of Minnesota would make a great vacation in the summer or early fall. I've been to the other side of Lake Superior - the UP of MI side - and it's pretty amazing. The South Pier Inn would be a good home base for a visit to the north shore of the lake, I think.

Boat nerds GALORE in this video!

Just don't kill anyone when you're on a boat or a train

... or if you do, make sure they're a horrible, child-murdering criminal and you go in on the murder together with your fellow passengers. At all costs, avoiding murdering beautiful, selfish but basically nice, young heiresses. That will not end well for you.

R30 R42 I used to do that until I saw a nickel shoot out from under the wheel like a bullet. It was apparently too close to the edge of the rail. One a lighter note, sometimes Thomas Jefferson's face imprint would be left on the rail.

ROP I've seen two daytime meet-ups at that station. (A meet-up is when two trains pass each other)

R36, yeah I love her channel.

I've always been fascinated by trains. I'd love to live on a train.

There’s a ship coming in on this Duluth cam in about five minutes or so.

If you go to the Virtual Railfan channel on YouTube they have like over 26 different live feed cameras all over the country.

I like this one in Skykomish, WA. It’s nice & green & pretty!

R23 I generally don’t like graffiti on trains or anything else. It makes it look trashy. Kind of like some (not all) tattoos. I guess you could say graffiti is like tattoos for trains!

Thank you, OP. You're not losing your mind, but my jaw just dropped: the Southwest (ex-Super) Chief just stopped in La Plata, MO 29 minutes late. Three passengers got off and one boarded the train. The consist was just five passenger cars, a baggage car, and a single locomotive. I guess traffic is down because of the pandemic, but when I was kid, 1: it didn't stop in La Plata (it ran non-stop from Chicago to Kansas City en route to Los Angeles), 2: it usually carried ten Pullman sleeping cars, a diner, two buffet-lounge cars, and a round-end observation car plus two baggage/mail cars, a crew car, and at least three locomotives, 3: it usually ran in two sections (another entire train set ran 5 - 10 minutes behind the first one because they had so many passengers) during the summer, and 4: short of an act of God, it was NEVER 29 minutes late.

The Amtrak equipment looks like it's beautifully maintained but jeez, that used to be the best train in the country. Now it looks like a commuter train.

r56 Your post was starting to sound like a math problem.

Does anyone remember rail speeders, used by railroad personnel to inspect the tracks?

When I was maybe three to five years old, we lived in a house with a public park across the street. Just past the park was a hill surmounted by a train track. I was often awakened in the early morning by an odd motor-putt-putting sound, which passed before I could see what made it. It seemed to run on a regular schedule, so I resolved to make an effort to be up and ready to look at the tracks around the time it usually appeared.

It turned out to be a maintenance vehicle, small and strange, with a man seated on the back of it. Watching it pass became a morning ritual with me, and I liked to wave at its driver as he passed, and he sometimes waved back.

2000- In Eastern Europe they would show trains on regular tv every morning from 3-5am. Is was designed for insomniacs I found it comforting.

R56 interesting. I didn’t know that Amtrak stopped in La Plata.

I just started watching this YouTube video this morning. It’s The Southwest Chief CHI to LA. I learned if you have a private rail car you can hitch it to the back of the Amtrak for a price! What a cool way to travel!

One of the downsides to this video is you can hear a Karen in the background yelling , “excuse me! Excuse me!” To the poor waiter. Also there’s quite a few people talking in the background. Also talking in Russian. I wanted to tell everyone to be quiet!

R54 I watched you live cam yesterday afternoon and was treated to a huge 4 engine train resting then slowly took off it turned out to be a huge freight train I watched the entire train pass into the distance.

Thanks

Here’s a YouTube channel that has over 100 different cams listed! They’re from all over the world including Netherlands, Russia, Poland and Japan! I’m gonna be busy all day!

I’m not interested in it but I think it’s cool that you are OP.

I remember hearing some real crime show that involved planes or an airplane (don’t remember the details) but they found an eye witness who was there because his hobby was plane watching and I Remember thinking, people do that? It sounds boring to me but lots of people do it apparently. They log the take offs and landings, too. I see no harm in it But it were me I’d be terrified that they think I was a terrorist.

If you look right now you can see Amish passengers getting on at La Plata.

Amish pax here:

OP, are you 9 years old? Do your parents know that you spend your free time arguing and slinging banter with lecherous old Eldergays on the internet? Someone's going to get grounded and lose their Ipad privileges!!!

R65 Just saw them. Not as interesting as the blind woman who got off with her seeing-eye dog this morning so the dog could go to the other side of the parking lot and take a shit before they reboarded the train on their way to Chicago.

Well-trained dog is all I can say.

Kinda hot looking young Amish guys on the platform in La Plata now waiting for the (seriously delayed) Southwest Chief on OP's railcam link.

They appear to be fascinated by the Coke machine.

Any new nerds here?

pluto tv has a channel

597, old man.

Here's a review of an overnight train from Rome to Syracuse in Sicily. The train is actually boarded onto a ferry for the journey from the mainland to the island.

I like that video R72. I never knew trains went on those ferries

I never knew it either. I really want to take that trip.

Really R74? Maybe in “Deluxe” class similar to a Pullman (now Amtrak in the US) sleeper with your own, unshared accommodations, but the thought of spending the night with three strangers potentially snoring and sweating and farting along the way is less than “Comfort”able no matter what they call it.

Left unexplained, though, is how they line up the ferry and the pier given tidal variations. How do they roll the train off and on at the same times every day when the times of high and low tide vary every day? Short of putting the ferry in a dry dock where they can control the depth of the water, how do they do it?

I was thinking of a 1, 2 or 3 bed sleeper, R75. They're all decent value but the I imagine the 4-bed is used mostly by young backpackers.

"It's amazing and disturbing what they have channels devoted to showing on youtube."

Pluto Streaming TV has a live train video channel - it's an endless loop of Norwegian train-cams. Yeah, just cameras on the front of the engine, showing endless repeated video of the Norwegian countryside passing by. Occasional bits of music or passengers chatting, but mainly, endless repeated moving scenery with train sounds.

I put it on when I can't sleep, and that must be why that channel exists. That, and any advertising they get is pure profit, because it's the same film repeated a bazillion times forever.

This video is just stunning!

Lockdown has caused me to develop my own strange and unexpected "obscure Youtube genre' taste as well, OP, except mine runs towards 'watching strangers camp.' That's is. Just watching people I don't know go camping. Some of the vids are over 3 hours long, some less than 20 mins. My favourite is Steve Wallis, a regular everyday schlub from Edmonton, Alberta, who regularly does "stealth camps" in urban places - recently on a highway median, which was inexplicably great fun. Coming up he and a friend are putting their totally home made and dodgy looking "raft" into the North Saskatchewan River and sailing for 10 days just to see how far they get/what happens. I am embarrassingly excited about that.

There's also cutie Matthew Posa and his awesome dog Monty who go on long winter camping excursions in the Michigan woods. he cooks great food and I dunno, there's something really comforting about this genre of video. I just like watching other people cook over campfires, build shelters, hunker down etc. Usually watch a half hour or so of this content before bed, it makes me feel peaceful and comforted.

R79, That’s some good info thanks. I’m going to check some out. You may enjoy the videos of this guy who cooks in the forest. Nobody talks, you don’t see anyone’s face, it’s great. It’s so relaxing!

THank you R80, I'm going to check that out right now.

I suspect the videos of people camping are like the Korean "mukbang" videos, you know, the videos where an attractive person sits and eats food and looks into the camera? They give the illusion of a social life.

Maybe I should try them. I've had zero social life since the pandemic hit my area, most people have had the same issues, due to unusual circumstances I'm even more limited in who I can see than most people. Foo.

R80 here's a recent Matt Posa one, includes shelter building (which, again, I am now obsessed with - childhood throwback to fort building, I think): link below

And Steve Wallis camping no the highway median: link in next post

R82 I'm not saying you're wrong in your theory (I, too, have become a hermit since March) but personally it's about the coziness of camping, watching someone build a fire and listen to it crackling while they cook. I notice that the videos when the camp takes place in foul/stormy weather always get way more views, too, so I don't think I'm the only one. Even the cooking is part of it, because it's adds to the home-iness. If that makes sense? I've seen a few mukbang videos and they just seemed lame because they didn't involve camping!

Highway median stealth camp. I am well aware this is an odd hobby to watch this stuff but I swear to god it REALLY made me want to camp on a highway median. Which is... not a thing I thought I would ever want to do.

I watch lawnmowing videos on **utube............

The guy that filmed the notorious “train girl”/ Mary T. Wotjyla collision in the Chicago suburbs in the early 90s was a huge train fan filming an E9 on its last routes when a distracted Wotjyka stepped and front of the train and was struck. She died instantly and her body flung into the direction of the man filming and his grandson.

You might enjoy this, OP.

This video was pretty cool.......

So I'm home from my night shift job, and it's time to sleep... and I've got the Pluto Streaming Norwegian train ride channel on. Just a tape of a snow-covered valley going past, and chugging sounds.

My eyes are getting heavier...

This one fell over and went BOOM!

I just watched this one last night. Really amazing beauty!

Here’s the Duluth Canal cam. If you scroll back to 20:37 you can see the Paul R. Tregurtha sail in!

Here’s a container ship with all of your Amazon orders!

This is pretty sweet!

Some German ubahn porn for you.

I go on boat and get train on me. So I combine the love of both in one day for one low price.

I love London & the Underground. Have been watching & listening to YouTube vids of the different lines. They'll have a 30 minute vid like this, going from one end to the other. Love the sound of the trains whooshing through the tunnels. And of course the lady announcing each station.

Here’s a new cam on Belle Isle in the Detroit River. There are still ships that go by but not many. You can check marinetraffic.com to see when they might come by. It’s nice to watch the sunrise or sunset. Some of them are really gorgeous!

Where my nerds at?

The last freighter in for the season in Duluth.