mrpretzel said: It was a hobby in the '40s and '50s, before cameras that record audio were affordable. Maybe she's recording it to use in a show or movie.
In my hometown there are people recording the sounds of rare boat engines, and you can even buy CDs with hours of monotonous THUMP-THUMP-THUMPing from them. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if people collect train sounds in the same way. And Vania is definitely one of them.
We did something like this for a film shoot. We had to set up an array of mics down about 100 some meters of track while filming a steam locomotive. Was a lot of work but a bunch of fun to do at the same time