Those orb weaver spiders look rather nasty, but are overall quite harmless and stick to their grasshoppers, beetles and other insects, however, they can bite if cornered. To be honest, I would probably run away first before touching one!
As far as unusual trains I've seen some rather interesting equipment off and on.
One day while out rail fanning down near the Lawrence, a through freight came through on the mainline. In tow, going northbound (east), was a string of old Boston Elevated subway cars. These must've been on their way to the Seashore Trolley Museum. They were coupled up like regular passenger cars and rode along on their trucks.
Another time while working in Lowell, I was outside the building at lunchtime and caught a westbound freight pulling a string of old B&M Alco S-2s and S-3s with some still in the maroon and gold B&M Minuteman paint scheme. They were heading, I think now, to East Deerfield and sadly were probably being scrapped. This was in the mid-1980s in the midst of the Guilford takeover when they were getting rid of still-working Alco diesels, and destroying the U-boats.
Then on another freight, speaking of U-boats, just after the Guilford takeover, there was a train being pulled by Maine Central U-boats including one still painted in the Rock Island "ROCK" pain scheme. The old U25Bs looked really, nice. This lash-up didn't last, and shortly afterwards the U-boats were scrapped in favor of some "new" GP40-2s which were purchased from the CN.
We were lucky too when the MBTA had an equipment shortage and hunted around for equipment from anywhere and everywhere. In the late 1970s through the early 1980s, we had the D&H PA1s pulling GO-Transit cars. I got to ride on a train once from Andover to Boston into North Station. On another day, we had a string of old Boston and Albany (Yes still lettered for the B&A) as passenger cars on the commuter train. We also had trains of mixed RDCs from CNR, CPR, NH, B&O, Reading, NYC, PRSL, and CNJ, on various trains. On one train I took home from Boston, we had a CPR RDC being used as a cab-car, which was pushed by the newly acquired FP10s painted in their Easter egg paint scheme.