Freight Train Riders of America
The Freight Train Riders of America (FTRA) is a notional group who move about America by freight hopping ("catching out") in railroad cars, particularly in the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada, and have sometimes been linked to crimes and train derailments. History and background. The FTRA is sometimes claimed to have been founded by a group of Vietnam veterans in 1984 in a Montana bar. Members of the FTRA claim to be a loosely knit club of people who share a similar lifestyle, organized for mutual support. FTRA members are most frequently encountered along  the BNSF Railway's Hi-Line, which stretches from Chicago to Seattle, often sleeping in switching yards, bridge underpasses and boxcars along the route. An offshoot of the FTRA, known as the Blood Bound Railroad Gang, distinguishes themselves by wearing red bandanas, as opposed to the FTRA's black bandanas. In 2011, Gus Melonas, a spokesman for the BNSF, said the "FTRA and associated act[s] of riding and living on the rails have gone largely extinct." Criminal accusations. Retired Spokane police officer Bob Grandinetti has specialized in investigating the FTRA & FTRC both as a Spokane police officer and since his  retirement. He claims members of the group are linked to food stamp and benefit fraud, illegal drug trafficking, and thefts, as well as brutal assaults and murders committed against other transients, vagrants, and the public. These crimes and incidents have been linked to FTRA and FTRC members: Realistically, any distinction of the FTRA as an organization, or a count of its members, is a loose one at best, due to the circumstances inherent to rail riding, and to a transient lifestyle in general. This also speaks to the contradictory information regarding whether or not the FTRA is a well organized  criminal group. Author Richard Grant writes that various FTRA members, including American founder D. Boone, insist the group was founded on the basis of camaraderie between people sharing a similar lifestyle of adventure and not as a criminal organization.