foamer

[Arnold Zwicky]

in the April 2009 issue of Details magazine, p. 112-115, a piece
"Trainspotting", by Steven Kurutz -- on railfans (railroad
enthusiasts, or railnuts) known as "foamers".  Kurutz explains (p. 114):

[Gary] Forbes is what's known in railroad circles as a foamer--a fan
so ardent in his love for locomotion that he all but froths at the
mouth.  The term, coined by Amtrak workers, carries a whiff of disdain.
.....

there's an Urban Dictionary entry that says much the same, but adds an
extension to "anyone who gets excited about something so much that
they start foaming at the mouth."

there's a website, of course: http://foamer.railfan.net/

foamers are in the news these days.  from Nancy Friedman's Fritinancy
blog on 9 March:

 From a New York Times travel feature by Andy Isaacson about riding
Amtrak across the United States: [ http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/travel/08amtrak.html?ref=todayspaper
  ]
Around the train car lounged Americans traveling for work and others
for family, people for whom train travel is a necessity and those for
whom it’s merely quaint, first-time riders and probably even a few
“foamers” — the nickname that train workers privately give the buffs
who salivate over the sight of a locomotive.
That sentence suggests that foamer derives from "foaming at the
mouth," but a retired locomotive engineer who goes by "Hoghead" sets
the record straight in Yahoo Answers: [ http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080809125331AAydbiU
  ]

The Western Pacific (now the UP) runs the "Feather River Route"
eastward along the Feather River to Portola and beyond. The timber
industry has now been gutted, but at the time there were a lot
pollutants being dumped into the river upstream, primarily waste from
mills and stagnant log ponds.

This caused the formation of copious amounts of foam in back washes
and eddies along the river, a favorite place for rail buffs and
photographers.

Often times, these people would wade into the river to get the right
angle for a photo, usually knee deep or deeper amidst the foam, hence
the moniker was applied; "Foamers." Its meaning has been upgraded to
describe an over zealous aficionado of rail operations.

.....

Foamer is North American slang, used by rail buffs (sometimes called
railfans) as well as non-enthusiasts. (The pejorative term is FRN, for
Fucking Rail Nut.) The UK equivalent is trainspotter.

http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2009/03/word-of-the-week-foamer.html

[a commenter says: "The more direct UK equivalent is gricer, not
trainspotter."]

[to me, Hoghead's account sounds suspiciously detailed and colorful.]

arnold

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