Tale of train chasers

When Bill Choiniere and Kurt Haubrich first met in Bemidji in the early 1970s, they struck up their conversation because they were wearing identical train engineer style hats.

The relationship that formed between Choiniere, Haubrich and fellow enthusiast Dan Hunter during those college years over a love for trains is featured in a documentary film “Railfans Chasing Trains.”

The 70-minute film follows the three men over five days as they track down, watch, chart and photograph train activity across the Midwest. The documentary on the St. Croix Valley residents was directed, filmed and edited by Jim Choiniere, a former Valley resident and the brother of Bill Choiniere.

The film, according to Bill and Jim Choiniere, is filled with interesting information about railroads, trains and other equipment that help the industry run. However this is not a story about trains. Trains are merely a vehicle in which to tell the story of friendship, laughter and long-standing relationships.

The Choiniere’s spent time growing up in Louisiana. They claim trips from the Cajun State to Michigan to visit family members is where they fell in love with trains, watching them as they traveled north and south across the country. That interest in the steel giants continued after they moved to the Stillwater-Oak Park Heights area.

“I enjoyed watching the trains as a kid,” Bill Choiniere said. “For some reason it was always a highlight for me.”

Bill Choiniere, 59, is an Oak Park Heights resident. He has worked for Andersen Corporation for 19 years and has been chasing trains with friends Hunter and Haubrich for 30 years.

Jim Choiniere, 52, is a director and editor at Excellent Journey Pictures, an independent film company in Thousand Oaks, Calif., north of Los Angeles. It wasn’t until two weeks before the rail-chasing trip that Jim Choiniere made the decision to go along with his older brother and film the group of longtime friends as they chased trains.

“I was literally in the shower thinking, and this documentary just came to my mind,” Jim Choiniere said. “I thought, I’ll take the camera now and capture why these guys do what they do.

“I was a tag-along. I like trains, but all of a sudden there was this fascination about these guys, about why they did this. I had no real plan, and it just kind of unfolded.”

While Jim Choiniere admits the technical information about railroads contained in the film is interesting, the people drive the documentary. Each person, he notes, adds a unique dynamic to the group.

“You have these three very distinct personalities who have known each other for 30 years,” the filmmaker said. “They have that 30-year relationship built around trains. To watch that play out on this trip just totally fascinated me.”

Haubrich, who works in the railroad industry, is a walking encyclopedia of train knowledge, said Choiniere. Not only does he know the field inside and out, but he also articulates the information so anyone can understand it.

Hunter goes at the search for trains with a child-like energy, becoming enthusiastic about any nuance the men would encounter along their journey, said Choiniere.

Bill Choiniere was the logistical mind behind the trip. He meticulously planned the five-day adventure over the span of two weeks. Each day was charted in spreadsheet that included mileage, routes, hotels and restaurants in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming.

“He was like the Black Lab of the three,” Jim Choiniere said about his brother. “If there was a train moving, he wanted to chase it.”

Part of Bill Choiniere’s love of trains is found in that attention to detail which helped him plan the trip and a curiosity of how things work.

“I like to learn,” Choiniere said. “How does a railroad operate? When you see the signals on the railroad, how does it work? Can you use the signals on the railroad to determine if a train is coming?

“It’s the sense of being able to find [the trains]. I like the things that you can use, a scanner, a laptop to bring up train schedules. It’s the fun of seeing something different.”

Having the railroad and trains as a hobby has always given food for thought to Bill Choiniere and his wife, Barb.

“My wife has asked me why I don’t join a club, a railroad club,” Choiniere said. “I told her I can’t because those guys eat, sleep and breath trains and I don’t want that. I want a hobby. They are too much about the trains and not enough about the people.”

During the editing process, Jim Choiniere plowed through more than 22 hours of film footage taken over the course of the trip to find the focus of the film, that the relationships between these three men is more important than the trains.

Choiniere whittled away at the raw footage. After building a rough draft, he had several filmmaking counterparts view the movie in its initial stage.

“I brought in different film makers out in L.A. who have absolutely no interest in trains whatsoever,” the filmmaker said. “I sat them down to watch the first 10 minutes of it and they wanted to watch the whole darn thing. They were just riveted to it.”

“Railfans Chasing Trains” premiered at the Oak Street Theater in Minneapolis Saturday, Dec. 8. Excellent Journey Pictures is looking to spread the film through arenas such as NetFlix, with the hope of having it aired on television channels such as the Discovery Channel.

“I think anytime you do any kind of story where you connect with the heart, people get sucked in,” Choiniere said. “Titanic really wasn’t a story about a boat. The boat was a backdrop. The film was a love story. In reality this is not a story about trains. It is a story about guys who have built a friendship around their love for trains. And the trains really become the backdrop to the whole story.”