tell us about the freight trains!
There's a lot that could be said idk
It's a tradition in the U.S. going back a long ways and crust punk etc types are just the most recent iteration, tho punks riding freight trains has been a thing since at least the early-mid 90s. The generation before that was like marginal types and I believe some Vietnam vets ca late 70s-early 80s who struggled to reintegrate into society. I met some of those types in the early 00s, some were really cool and some were...not. But the primary group riding freight has always been and likely always will be, no surprise, migrant/transient labor. A lot of punks actually did seasonal labor - apples, cranberries, sugar beets, a few ppl I met did fishing stuff up in Alaska - so it comes full circle a bit, tho idk if that's still the case or not. Some people were interested in or cared more about like traditional hobo culture, I never really did.
If you have how questions - how do you get on/off, how do you know where the trains are going, etc - I can answer them but idk how relevant it is to people who don't ride. It's different now tho, everyone having smartphones was a gamechanger, you can just track individual cars by serial #. Back in (ahem) my day, you had a to be a bit savvier/more knowledgeable.
I don't really ever bring it up unless I run into younger punks who still ride and we'll trade shop talk. People - norms - are usually like "wait that still exists" cos they have the idea of hobos as a Depression thing, bindlestiffs, etc
I happen to live pretty close to one if Chicago's many major trainyards and there's a heavily used track down the street from my house. I do enjoy every now + then sitting on the back porch and seeing trains go by. Yunno the memories it evokes. Being young, that age where you don't realize what it means to young. Most punks who do it are only semi-transient, you'll be based or at least winter over (tho I've ridden in winter, you just need to be geared up) somewhere, but it's still a very difficult lifestyle to maintain as you age, let one if you have kids, any kind of physical disability or anything requiring a regular routine (including most jobs, hence the seasonal labor).