Train hopping is for those who need it. Give it respect and don't treat it like a sport or touristy thing.

Story time... More than a score of years ago I was a young man traveling south from Seattle with a group of other kids. And old hand (I'll call him Jim) took us under his wing and showed us a bit of the ropes, how to ride the rails. The train folks are pretty old school. Level-headed, and not unkind.

At one point we stopped on a siding. Before long an older man in overalls and a cap came down, walking the line. He could have walked out of a 100-year old photo. We kids were spooked and hid in the back of the car, but Jim just sat calmly in the open cargo door, in plain sight, and waited for the train man to reach us. When he saw us he was very calm and quiet, he greeted Jim and they had a very mellow and civil little conversation. Before he left to check the rest of the train, he picked up a rusted old loose train spike from the ground and showed us how to use it to spike open the cargo door so it wouldn't be able to slide shut and trap us or injure us.

At a yard near Tacoma we tried to jump on a slow-moving train and the bulls stopped us. They were pretty kind considering, and they said that if we had been boarding a stopped train they wouldn't have bothered us, but a few weeks earlier a guy had tried to hop a moving train and tripped and fell and lost both of his legs, and that's why they stopped us that night, they said. Jim had a warrant out for some BS so they took him in. The next morning we tried to go see him but none of us knew his last name so the (very friendly and sympathetic) officer at the station's front desk couldn't tell us anything about him. We had to leave and I never saw him again. (Way before cell phones were common. Feels like 1800's now.)

I remember getting rained on while riding on some tanker cars. They have these niches in the bulkheads at each end that are just large enough for one or two people to curl up in. We took turns in there with the rest of us huddled around to try to block the rain. It might sound crazy but it was a lot of fun.

But I can't recommend it as an adventure. Visit the Grand Canyon, or volunteer in a remote place, or something if you want adventure. Train hopping is for those who need it. The old school respect and kindness that passed between the train folks and a group a homeless kids trying to travel hundreds of miles with no money was one of those secular sacred things that deserves respect. Trains are awesome.