Freight Train Enthusiast Devastated to Learn Girlfriend Was Only Interested in Passenger Rail

Amateur railfan Derek Hopper has ended his eight-month relationship with fellow train enthusiast Amanda Vestibule after discovering that her interest in railways is limited exclusively to passenger services, a revelation he described as 'a fundamental betrayal of everything I thought we had.' 'She told me she loved trains,' Hopper said, sitting in his apartment surrounded by freight car identification guides. 'She never specified passenger trains. I assumed she meant all trains. You don't say you love dogs and then clarify you only love golden retrievers.' The couple met at a railway photography meetup in September and bonded over what Hopper believed was a shared appreciation for all forms of rail transport. Warning signs emerged gradually. 'She kept wanting to photograph Amtrak services,' Hopper recalled. 'I thought she was just being polite. Then I showed her my collection of intermodal container photos and she said, and I quote, they all look the same. There are over 400 container configurations. They do not all look the same.' Vestibule defended her position. 'Passenger trains have character,' she said. 'They have liveries, they have destinations, they carry human stories. A grain hopper is a gray cylinder. I do not understand photographing gray cylinders for six hours in a parking lot.' 'It wasn't a parking lot, it was a classification yard,' Hopper corrected. The breakup was finalized during a trip to see the California Zephyr, which Vestibule arranged as a romantic gesture. Hopper spent the entire journey leaning out the window photographing passing freight consists instead of enjoying the scenery. 'He literally turned his back on the Rocky Mountains to photograph a coal train,' Vestibule said. 'That's when I knew.' Both have updated their dating profiles to specify their rolling stock preferences. Hopper's reads: 'Freight only. Passenger fans need not apply.'