Why was riding the rails in the great depression really illegal?
Not only was riding the rails cheating the railway company of revenue, it was also grossly unfair to the company’s employees who had to collect and dispose of mangled human remains on the track. To this day they have the same problem in India, where people ride on the roof of trains to avoid the ticket collector, and occasionally get wiped off by low bridges. I have also seen film clips of youths ‘train-surfing’ for sport in S. America. All these people risk giving some poor railwayman a most unpleasant and unavoidable job.
