Been looking into this for a while and the correlation is genuinely hard to dismiss. Old rail corridors essentially function as ready-made wildlife channels - dense undergrowth, minimal human traffic on decommissioned stretches, and consistent water sources where bridges cross streams. If something large and unclassified is moving through a region, it would use these routes.
What bothers me about most Dogman reports near rail lines specifically is the consistency in behaviour described - witness accounts repeatedly mention the subject moving along the track rather than crossing it. That's purposeful navigation, not random animal movement.
I've cross-referenced about a dozen reports from the Dogman Encounters Radio archive against historical rail maps and there's a notable cluster pattern in the upper Midwest, particularly around abandoned logging spurs from the early 1900s. These lines often terminate deep in old-growth remnants. Worth noting.
The counterargument I keep running into is misidentification of large feral dogs or wolves re-establishing range, which is fair - but that doesn't account for the bipedal locomotion consistently described.
Has anyone actually done systematic GPS mapping of sighting coordinates against OS or USGS rail data? Feels like the kind of spatial analysis that could either kill this theory quickly or make it very difficult to explain away. I'd be interested in pooling data if anyone has documented sightings with proper coordinates rather than just vague county-level location descriptions.
Drop your sightings below - even negative reports from rail-adjacent areas are useful.