Honestly hadn't thought about the railroad connection until I read this thread but now I'm kind of shaken. There's an old abandoned line not far from me here in Roswell and I've had some genuinely weird experiences out that way at night.
Never saw a full Dogman but I've caught some odd shapes on my Bushnell trail cam that I can't explain. Big, moving fast, upright for a second before dropping down. Could be anything I suppose but the size was off.
The railroad theory makes sense to me though. Old lines follow natural corridors - valleys, tree lines, water sources. Makes sense that something would use the same routes. Animals do it all the time, why not something we haven't properly catalogued yet?
A few things I've noticed near that old line:
Strong smell, kind of musky and wrong, Dogs in the area go absolutely mental at night, Found some strange prints once, couldn't identify them
I'm dead new to cryptozoology so I'm not claiming anything definitive. But I do think location patterns matter a lot and rail corridors being a hotspot seems plausible.
Has anyone mapped these sightings properly? Like an actual overlay of reported encounters against old rail infrastructure? Feels like someone with decent GIS skills could do something useful there. Would love to see the data if it exists.