Trainspotters

[OwlHoot]

My theory is that train spotters like Gricerboy are some kind of throw back to the stone age, playing out a deep-seated instinct to clock and stalk herds of buffalo.

If you think about it, a train comprising a line of rounded carriages looks vaguely like an orderly row of buffaloes or mammoths trundling along (if you're really shortsighted), and they even make similar low pitched growling and wheezing noises (if you're almost deaf).

That must explain why the Peak Army were/are such a bunch of hooligans.

[Zippy]

But why hunt? There is nobody waiting for them in the cave when they get back.

[AtW]

There is nobody waiting for them in the cave when they get back.

[MarillionFan]

My theory is that train spotters like Gricerboy are some kind of throw back to the stone age, playing out a deep-seated instinct to clock and stalk herds of buffalo.

If you think about it, a train comprising a line of rounded carriages looks vaguely like an orderly row of buffaloes or mammoths trundling along (if you're really shortsighted), and they even make similar low pitched growling and wheezing noises (if you're almost deaf).

That must explain why the Peak Army were/are such a bunch of hooligans.

Says the poster with a caveman licking a flame

[Doggy Styles]

Perhaps not buffalo. I think there is something phallic going on there. Big throbbing monsters gliding into tunnels and all that shit.

[bogeyman]

My theory is that train spotters like Gricerboy are some kind of throw back to the stone age, playing out a deep-seated instinct to clock and stalk herds of buffalo.

If you think about it, a train comprising a line of rounded carriages looks vaguely like an orderly row of buffaloes or mammoths trundling along (if you're really shortsighted), and they even make similar low pitched growling and wheezing noises (if you're almost deaf).

That must explain why the Peak Army were/are such a bunch of hooligans.

Ah, the taxophilic urge


In a curious way I think you may be right.

Stone-age man had to learn to memorise patterns (of animal migration behaviours etc.) and the human brain has a strong tendency to look for, and try to make sense of, apparently random occurrences.

Train Spotters have a taxophilic urge to collect locomotive numbers, and to follow the movements of particular locomotives, and classes of locomotive, across the railway network - like migrating Wilderbeest. This behaviour is not entirely unique to train spotters however. Any 'collecting' hobby is driven by much the same urge.

Train Spotters should not be confused with serious railway enthusiasts and railway historians, to whom they are an unremitting source of embarrassment.

Train spotting used to be an unremarkable pass time when I was a kid. As was stamp collecting and fishing in small murky ponds for tadpoles and sticklebacks. But if, by the time you were 17 and you were still train spotting, or fishing in murky ponds for tadpoles, you were considered a bit of an oddity.

Any kind of spotter (train, bus, car or whatever) will likely figure high on the autistic spectrum. There are even people who spot different types of electricity pylon and even the different insulators on the pylons.

Personally I collect Toblerone boxes.

[Doggy Styles]

Ah, the taxophilic urge

Aha, I knew I was right. From the ancient Greek:

Taxo = Stuffed, and Philic = Phallus

The urge to stuff one's phallus somewhere. Or it might be Latin actually.

[bogeyman]

Aha, I knew I was right. From the ancient Greek:

Taxo = Stuffed, and Philic = Phallus

The urge to stuff one's phallus somewhere. Or it might be Latin actually.

Sounds like you did classics at my school.

[Doggy Styles]

Sounds like you did classics at my school.

You buggered it up as well then?

[OwlHoot]

Says the poster with a caveman licking a flame

That's a young Santa Claus, before his beard turned white.