More good graf

[Rich_S]

Probably because whomever took the picture likely did the graf too (or someone who had a lot of respect for the work).  They don't want a car owner (or even a railroad) to see their artwork only to immediately put in for the car to be shopped and painted over.

As long as the car owner doesn't say anything, something like that is likely to just stay out there forever.  And if they don't have any idea what the car number is it's just one of a million cars out there rolling around impossible to track it down.

The odds of someone who would care stumbling on the picture is pretty small, but I guess it's still more than zero.  Kinda like people showing off their cars online blocking out the license plates.

I personally find that amusing. The person that defaced the cars original paint scheme, does not want TTX corporation, the owner of the car, to know the car number. In case TTX wants to repaint the car. I have a better suggestion for whomever painted this car, put your artwork on canvas and sell them to people who will keep and treasure them. Vandalism is vandalism it does not matter if it's your personal vehicle or something owned by a major corporation. Just because it happens frequently, does not mean it's OK. Railroads spend a lot of money to paint their equipment, they are rolling advertisements for the company. If the appearance of the cars did not matter, they'd paint them all black with white lettering. Because of the shear number of freight cars in service today, plus the revenue loss when a car is taken out of service for repaint or repainting, is the reason that many of these defacement's last for years on the side of equipment.  My personal opinion, I hate seeing criminal activity praised. Plus, to take the argument to the nth degree, what do you think this persons family would do if this car accidentally moved and killed the person painting this image? Yep, they would probably sue the railroad. 

[Scottl]

I like RR graffiti (and the OP is a fine example)- it gives the utter disregard that modern railroads give to aesthetics an edge and interest that appeals to me at some level.

Maybe someone will figure out a way to prevent graffiti in the future, but until then...

[peteski]

I smell a Peteski Production!

Um, I missed this thread up until now. Image saved for possible future use. 

[eric220]

I'm thoroughly in the camp of graffiti is a crime and nothing more. However anyone feels morally, I think it is important for everyone to acknowledge that this criminal behavior that exposes the perpetrators to a lot of liability, both criminal and civil. (Can you imagine how many prosecutions and lawsuits Ich will be facing if he gets identified?) I'll concede that some of these guys have a lot of raw artistic talent. Regardless, there's a victim here. It's easy to dismiss them as a nameless, faceless corporation, but this is still private property that is being vandalized. We're talking about railroads here, but so many of these guys are also vandalizing small businesses that rely on their public image to survive. I'd really like to see some data on how much money is spent, and therefore passed on to the consumer, to clean up graffiti. To me, the tolerance and even reverence for this criminal behavior (that victimizes real people in addition to faceless corporations and government entities) is one of the facets of American culture that baffles and embarrasses me.

Let me ask those who have a tolerance for graffiti on rail cars, would it change your opinion if the railroad took any graffiti'd car out of service until it could be cleaned? San Francisco BART has such a policy. Riders pay for graffiti, in both hiked fares and reduced car availability, on a system that is short on cars on a good day. For the most part, the local taggers know how BART rolls, but because of the industry and cultural tolerance, cars are regularly sidelined and service suffers.

[nscaler711]

Um, I missed this thread up until now. Image saved for possible future use. 

Save your Vaseline Pete, far better pics on the rest of the net. 

I like graffiti, I think it helps with maintenance as the paint adds an extra layer of protection. But that's just me.
Sure its vandalism, illegal blah blah, but you can't tell me you don't speed or obey every law in its entirety, cause last time I checked that's all illegal too. But hey whatever. Besides you speeding is risking more lives than that piece of art... So just sayin....

What I like is that writers are now masking of reporting marks and and other crucial data, they are getting smart, as they don't want to see their stuff resprayed. Its probably difficult to do in N unless you make your own decals or are a wizard at drawing your own.

[eric220]

Sure its vandalism, illegal blah blah, but you can't tell me you don't speed or obey every law in its entirety, cause last time I checked that's all illegal too. But hey whatever.

Yeah, but the criminal liability for speeding is a couple hundred bucks in fines. The criminal liability for vandalism this extensive is felony charges that could result in the loss of voting rights, among many others, and over a year in prison. Not even the same discussion.

[eja]

Good (?) or bad, it is still vandalism and trespassing.

That is my opinion and I'm sticking with it !

eja

[peteski]

Save your Vaseline Pete, far better pics on the rest of the net. 

Relax, I'm not looking for a cheap thrill - I'll use it to make a decal to model that car. 

[Hyperion]

I'd really like to see some data on how much money is spent, and therefore passed on to the consumer, to clean up graffiti.

It's actually probably a lot smaller than you'd expect.  Not that I'm saying that justifies anything.

Amongst my many positions I ran procurement for both BNSF's car Backshop in Havelock as well as a stint for our whole system of car facilities.   In the field, you're talking a few hundred spray cans a year to patch over particularly offensive imagery.  Maybe a few grand total and a couple grand in labor total per year for the whole railroad -- it really is pretty rare to bother covering something up.  The Backshop was a little different as there are paint facilities rather than rattle cans, but it's still not much money.  Many cars got touch-up paintwork done anyways and most got at least some re-stenciling, so it's hard to really quantity the true incremental cost of the graffiti, but it certainly wouldn't approach anything remotely near 6 figures for the year -- and that's for one of the largest car repair facilities in the country.  Boxcars -- the favorite target for graf -- usually got a full strip and repaint anyhow, so there was no incremental cost there at all. 

In a few years there I can count on one hand the number of times a car got painted just due to graffiti when new paint wasn't in the workscope for the overhaul.  Most graf just got patched over right along with the other touch-up work, similar to a field rattle-can job, just much better quality.  On the other hand, I can actually count many more times that we went through the trouble to save graffiti on a car side by completely re-stenciling it, rather than stripping/repainting it.  At least a few times (on both sides of a car) going through the trouble of putting a contrasting color behind the stencils so they'd stand out against the graffiti.

This car for example... came into Havelock for rebuild when I was there... the artist did not block off the stenciling like that.  You can tell because we don't have Mineral Brown behind our stencils/logos on coal cars.  The artist did know enough to leave them uncovered, but they were still hard to read amongst the graf.  So it came into Havelock and rather than repainting it, we just patched over it and left 95% of the "art" unscathed (the other side has an equally impressive tropical island painted on it)

[nkalanaga]

Mark:  Thank you for the railroad shop's view.   Since the railroad is the injured party here, if they don't consider graffiti worth complaining about, I'm not going to get upset about it.

Maybe, if BNSF can identify the artist, they could be allowed to repaint a series of coal cars.  With tips from the railroad on how to avoid/repaint the stenciling it could make a nice series of publicity cars.  Do a few of various scenes for each state or region the railroad serves?  Similar to the truck trailers BN had years ago with city scenes?

For those worrying about illegality, the bigger liability issue is someone being injured while trespassing, and that applies whether they have a spray can, a camera, or are barehanded.  Whether they end up hurt or not, THAT is a federal offense, and something for the artists (and railfans) to worry about.

Now, if they do their graffiti at an industry, not on railroad property, yet another set of laws applies, and that depends on where they are...

[nscaler711]

Who cares about the legality of it. Its not affecting you personally so leave it at that. I for one want to see more pictures.
I love me some graffiti, its why 75% of my rolling stock has some.

[eric220]

Who cares about the legality of it. Its not affecting you personally so leave it at that. I for one want to see more pictures.
I love me some graffiti, its why 75% of my rolling stock has some.

Who cares? Me! Who does it affect personally? Me! Every time I have to stand on BART because a graffiti'd car is sitting in the yard instead of adding capacity to my train, it affects me, and hundreds of other riders. That graffiti is there because of the industry and cultural tolerance for criminal vandalism that is defended as "art". How about the danger that these guys are putting themselves in by approaching cars that are hot with third rail power?

[Hyperion]

Mark:  Thank you for the railroad shop's view.   Since the railroad is the injured party here, if they don't consider graffiti worth complaining about, I'm not going to get upset about it.

I wouldn't say it's so much "not caring" as much as "not caring enough to pay to fix it".  Which certainly, at some point, becomes synonymous with 'not caring'.

Sorta like the difference between someone dinging your brand-new, fresh-off-the-lot 2016 SUV or if they dinged your 1982 rusted-out winter beater.  You're not generally super happy about either.  Sure, there's the rare case that the person who dinged your door is an extremely apologetic supermodel (i.e. some really neat graf) -- but usually it's just a door ding and there's nothing you can do about it after the fact except decide whether you care enough to fix it or not.

Maybe, if BNSF can identify the artist, they could be allowed to repaint a series of coal cars.  With tips from the railroad on how to avoid/repaint the stenciling it could make a nice series of publicity cars.  Do a few of various scenes for each state or region the railroad serves?  Similar to the truck trailers BN had years ago with city scenes?

Yeah... not terribly likely.  Our executive team can be sticklers for universality of appearance... which is ironic considering the reluctance to even get our locos all painted the same, even as we celebrate 20 years post-merger. 

And while we don't make an active campaign to eradicate taggers, we most certainly don't want to encourage them by "teaching" (of course the good ones already know this) them how to avoid the stencils with the hope that their art will last longer or somehow make them think that it's "okay" to come on our property to do it as long as they do it "right".  There is no "right" way for a "civilian" to hang on/around a railcar and paint it.

On the other hand, we did invite some local youth graffiti artists to paint a pretty big mural inside one of our shops earlier this year.  I don't have a copy of the picture but it it's pretty cool.  We also commissioned some to do some logo work for us (work groups, divisions, etc can create their own logos).

For those worrying about illegality, the bigger liability issue is someone being injured while trespassing, and that applies whether they have a spray can, a camera, or are barehanded.  Whether they end up hurt or not, THAT is a federal offense, and something for the artists (and railfans) to worry about.

.

This.  SO MUCH this. 

Above all else we don't want people hanging around our property and certainly not around any rolling stock.  That is truly the bigger issue.  It's not that we "don't care" that someone vandalizing our stuff.  Of course we do.  We're not running an art school.  But it's the act of doing it that is far more concerning than some crap we gotta spray-paint over.  Once it's on there, we'll decide whether we care to bother to remove it or not (almost universally not).  But whether it's "good" or "bad" it still means there was an exposure to risk while it was being done.

[C855B]

I have completely different takes on this issue.

A few members of a railfan clique I hung out with used to tag cars back in the '70s. But they used chalk. Same sort of thing as "Herbie" (palm tree, sombrero) or "The Rambler" (glass of champagne). I think the second Microscale chalk graffiti set from way back included one of "our" tags. The chalk was relatively innocent, and transient. However, we very much frowned on the spray-painted gang tags that were the root of today's highly graphic conceits. We still do, as it's vandalism with durable intent.

I used the word "conceit" for a reason - the tagger's reward for his or her "art" is that it is allowed to exist. That they know (like Mark said) that equipment owners aren't going to do anything about it encourages the activity. The tag exists for the life of the car, and in some instances is glorified through replication - MTL's version of the infamous "STEEL" autorack tag is one such case. If that's not rewarding an activity done out of a sense of exhibitionist self-aggrandizement, I don't know what is.

So my personal approach to tagging of anything I have even small control over is to eradicate the tag immediately on discovery. This removes the reward. A stubborn tagger may try a couple of more times, but I happen to be more stubborn. I had one instance where I was keeping an eye on a tag location on one of my properties, checking first thing every morning - I could completely remove the tags with paint thinner and a brush, I'd catch it that fresh. It only took a couple of weeks before they gave up because, again, the reward was denied - it was never up long enough for anybody important to them to see it, or for others to see that the tag-ee had painted a patch over it (a secondhand acknowledgement of the deed).

Then there's my model railroading. No tags, because I model circa 1970. Solves the problem. I've hand "chalked" a couple of cars with the old clique tag, maybe I ought to find one and post it.

[SandyEggoJake]

Hung out with Bozo Texino, did you? 

While fully on board with tagging = crime, I'm all for dedicate "graffitti wall" and public murals.  Also, interesting to learn the progression of rail graffiti; from yard chalk marks, to hobo marks, the death of Billboard Boxcars, mere tagging, to freak'n rolling Picasso's. 

Honestly, would be a great PR campaign if a progressive RR did something analogous to the BMW Art Cars Series.  http://www.bmwdrives.com/bmw-artcars.php 

Sure beat the heck out of waiting at a crossbuck staring down a line of these....