26.People want to know if you have supernatural powers, because the sun
is always shining in your photographs.
27.You sit in a high school auditorium for hours on a cold winter day, watching thousands of slides and attempting to
out-BS the railfan next to you.
28.You've ever bargained for a cab ride with a warm pizza and a six-pack of Coke.
29.You refuse to go to Horseshoe Curve any more since they started charging admission.
30.You hike up the side of the mountain and along dirtbike paths to gain access to Horseshoe Curve now.
31.That railfan rumor you just heard is too good to be true, but you continue to spread it anyways.
32.You consider Conrail's "Speak-n-spell" defect detectors to be a warm, caring, and familiar voice.
33.You go around imitating Conrail's defect detectors.
34.You believe that your status as a railfan is proportional to the number of cameras around your neck.
35.You speak softly, but carry a BIG TRIPOD!
36.You have faithfully written down the shutter speed and f-stop of every shot you've taken for the past zillion
years, yet you've really never used that data afterwards.
37.You scream and chant like a possessed, frothing sportsfan for the train to hit the car that just went around the
gate.
38.You're the first to notice the incorrect numberboards and lift rings on a recently restored locomotive.
39.Conrail SD8OMAC's make you feel tingly all over.
40.You have a web site set up on railfanning.
41.You're too damn good to stand in a photo line, so you stand in front of it.
42.You have slipped or fallen in mud or snow and have successfully saved the camera from the fall (disregard the thirty
stitches in your arm to save it).
43.You've established a large enough network of connections to know every move of the "Office Car Special" and Ringling
Brothers' Circus Train throughout the system.
44.Real inen don't need to ask for directions. Real railfans don't need maps.
45.You feel "one with nature" as you stand on a wooded mountainside overlooking a trestle spanning a river valley as you
wait for the train. You then twist your ankle on a rock and drop your camera.
46.You refer to an F4OPH as a "Screaming Thunderbox".
47.You refer to a Genesis unit as a "Mud Missile".
48.You and your railfan buddies get into EMD vs. GE arguments the way rednecks get into Word vs. Chevy brawls.
49.You've ever looked under the hood of your pickup to see if you could mount a Leslie 3-chime airhorn, only to realizethat you'd have to remove the engine block, battery, and master cylinder for it to fit. Continued on page 16