Genuinely fascinating pattern and one I hadn't considered until reading some of the American reports last year. I'm more of a ghost hunting type but I do keep tabs on cryptid sightings because theres obvious overlap in terms of location sensitivity - old infrastructure, liminal spaces, that sort of thing.
The railroad connection makes a weird kind of sense if you buy into the theory that certain locations act as conduits or attract anomalous activity. Abandoned rail lines tick every box: they cut through isolated terrain, they're old enough to have serious history attached to them, and animals naturally follow those corridors too which could explain some of the misidentification angle.
Has anyone cross-referenced the sighting locations with specific eras of railroad construction? I'd be curious whether lines built during certain periods show up more than others. Also wondering if anyone's done any actual fieldwork along these routes at night rather than just mapping reports. That would be the next logical step to me. The EVP and environmental data you could collect along an abandoned line would be interesting regardless of whether you encounter anything cryptid-related.
Anyone in the UK noticed anything similar along old rail routes or is this purely a North American pattern?