Rail-lining

Once upon a time, many long ages ago, when Detroit dinosaurs ruled the Earth, this province was chockablock with railway lines.  You could go nearly anywhere in the province by railway and the train staff was usually pleased to stop their iron horse to let you dismount where and when you wished.  People used to go fishing by train, simply telling the conductor what stream they wanted to get off at and that was that.  A returning train late in the day was flagged down and home they went.  These days are gone now, and never will return.  I can do without the Detroit dinosaurs but I most assuredly miss the trains.

This map, adapted from the NB Railway Museum, shows most of the historical NB railway lines

What we have now is a few active subdivisions of the CNR, the NB Southern Railway, too damned few passenger trains, and a lot of abandoned railway lines.  Most of the right-of-way for the lines abandoned during the last few decades has been converted into multi-use trails.  Some, sadly, have been abandoned to nature and it is now almost impossible to follow their course.  However, as you can see from comparing the two maps, there are now a lot of remote trails to hike.

Today's sad remnant

Railway lines make good places for naked hiking, it gives new meaning to the term "train buff."  The rail lines are good for a variety of reasons, first and foremost, they usually run for miles through the middle of nowhere so the chances of being seen and complained about are pretty minimal.  They also cross rivers and streams where you can fish or swim.  Also, being rail lines, they always have an easy grade so hills are at an absolute minimum, making them good for bicycling too.  Those rail lines that have been converted into multi-use trails usually have pretty good going wherever they haven’t been trashed by ATVs.  The lost and forlorn lines are more likely to be trashed but even the improved trails can suffer badly from heavy ATV use, whether from being rutted, or turned into mud holes, or desecrated by litter.  Even so, they are a good bet for all the reasons at the beginning of this paragraph.

Active railway lines are not good bets for naked hiking, not even for shorter hikes.  I DO NOT advocate hiking on active rail lines.  Why not?  Secondarily, because it is trespassing on railway property and some of their employees can get quite cranky about that.  But first and foremost, because it is dangerous.  Railway lines have a bad reputation for being inhabited by great thundering steel monsters that weigh a gazillion tons and simply can’t stop with any degree of ease.  Meddle not in the affairs of speeding steel monsters, for you are fragile and squishy, and they are not.

But . . . if you do decide to hike along an active railway for goodness sake keep your eyes open well in the distance ahead and look behind you every couple of minutes so the train doesn’t sneak up on you.  If you do both these things you will see the train long before the engineer sees you – those four big 200k candlepower headlights cannot be missed.  Then, get off the track immediately, far enough off the track that the engineer can’t see you and worry that you might fall in front of his train at the last minute.   Give him a break, it’s a stressful job.

Also, keep your ears open.  I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go for a hike in the wilds and then plug their earbuds in and listen to their MP3 player.  But people do it; I’ve seen it.  People have gotten run over by trains because of it.  The fact is that many people crank up their music to a level where they can no longer hear something so loud as a train horn -- 90 dB at 152 metres (500 feet).  How stupid is that ?!?!  Pretty stupid, and well deserving of a Darwin Award.

If you go hiking the train tracks (in Canada) a moderately active single line is going to look something like this, with shiny top surfaces on the rails and not much vegetation except a bit of grass or weeds growing on the railbed:

 
However, you are in luck if you know where to find a railway line that is out of use but not decommissioned.  Why lucky?  Because railway tracks still equipped with rails and ties make a very uncomfortable ATV trail so the ATVers go elsewhere.  Therefore hikers can have such rail lines all to themselves.  

Such a rail line is shown below, with rusted top surfaces on the rails and lots of vegetation such as bushes and berry canes growing up between the rails.  Note the encroachment on both sides of the right-of-way and the decrepit ties . . . all good signs.  (Caveat for US readers:  Some active US rail lines look far worse than that shown in the photo below -- don't be fooled by a railway with crappy maintenance.)

No, those signs weren't really there, I added them

If you’ve got one of these lines at your disposal you’re golden.  Check it out on Google Earth so you know what to expect all the way down the line, especially at road crossings, if any.

Most important, have fun!  And watch out for moose crossing the railroad.