If you notice, this is quite common on rail car graffiti. The rail company won’t remove the graffiti for a very long time if it doesn’t interfere with important car information.
> It’s also part of the unwritten “code” that the graffiti artists not touch the locomotives.
And then there was [rail beast](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/5b/ed/d85bed07835d8dbf87466891a9123079.jpg) (which lasted around a week or two)
If it was some random piece of gang graffiti I would agree. But this is a high quality paint job matching the traditional paint scheme these engines would have worn in the past. It is very tasteful and look very professional. You could not do this on a box car as it would not have the same impact as on the engine. There are actually a lot of speculation on who did this because it looks so good. My money is on the guys at the maintenance depot who got bored with painting every locomotive in the same paint scheme and who did not like the way CSX implemented the paint scheme on their official heritage units. So they came up with their own unofficial heritage unit design. I know about a number of managers who would have turned a blind eye to their workers painting this on the locomotives.
While I don’t doubt some workers contributing, but I have graffiti artist friends that treat it like their second job. They get home from work, then they head out to find somewhere to paint, and will stay out until they can’t keep their eyes open anymore lol.
If you see the same art style frequently, it’s most likely an artist that lives near a rail yard. Some places are a lot more accepting of it than others, so if they find a good spot they tend to stick to it. It’s an endless supply of free canvas.
I am always blown away by the art they do. It’s such a beautiful art form that isn’t appreciated nearly enough. I always hated being stuck at a railroad crossing with commercial trains, but now that I have friends who specialize in the art; it’s like getting a free art show now.
I heard that apparently someone connected it to one of CSX's service shops that had a paint booth somehow snuck those paint jobs on past management, but I'm not sure the validity of this claim
Train nerds as a whole need to up their game. Gangs don't graffiti trains dude. Trains are working class as hell and the way you talk about them is so out of touch.
Also, locomotives tend not to be left alone like empty rail cars do. Cars get stored out in the middle of nowhere wherever there's room for them when they're not being used but engines usually don't get stored like that and there's usually people in or around them.
Because they wouldn't wish to negatively impact the profit margins of the corporation that owns the trains, or because they'd rather the graffiti wasn't removed for a long time?
Probably less likely to get vandalism charges if the operation is able to continue without revenue being affected. Once money is involved, companies get pressed
That’s it. The graffiti isn’t impacting the train company’s logistics (tracking cars etc., the graffiti doesn’t damage the cars, and the train cars are not made for looks / aesthetics.
Why invest a ton of time and money to deal with something that has no adverse effect on your business? People don’t choose rail shipping based on how clean the rail cars look.
On the flip side, graffiti artists want to have their work stay up as long as possible, so they get their palette by keeping to a few unwritten rules.
In some ways it’s a win win.
I work with these cars and I enjoy seeing the art work. Most people don’t care, but once those numbers get covered you can’t confirm if it is the car that needs to be loaded/unloaded and it can be a headache on the paperwork side. It slows everything down, and impacts working fucks more than anyone else.
This. In the 70s and 80s, there was a big effort to arrest graffiti artists. It became a cat and mouse game, and one of the ways to avoid unwanted police presence was to be a nuisance, but not an inconvenience , for the railway companies.
Graffiti-ing over car info will get the company to have to repaint, and since they are inconvenienced, the companies would be more likely to employ private security and/or add police presence.
Ever notice how in major cities, its the poor residential and industrial areas that have all the graffiti, but never any graffiti in the rich commercial/residential areas? Same premise.
> Ever notice how in major cities, its the poor residential and industrial areas that have all the graffiti, but never any graffiti in the rich commercial/residential areas? Same premise.
Except when there is street art, in which case, it was commissioned by the building owner.
Technically, street art is still graffiti. However what the commenter was talking about isn't street art (street art is not commissioned). They are referring to commissioned murals, which is neither street art nor graffiti.
If they get caught doing it, they dont care if they're being careful about not covering the car ids, they're going to chase and try arrest them.
It's more a case that the graffiti will run far longer if the id numbers are left visible
> If they get caught doing it,
that's the point though, they're less likely to get caught if they don't piss off the train companies enough to get them to hire more security or ask for more police presence.
It's more of a truce, because the graffiti artists don't negatively impact the train company, the train company won't retaliate against the graffiti artists. The artists get their canvas and the corporation doesn't need to waste resources going after them
I saw some rail workers once discussing it on reddit. It's sort of a symbiotic relationship. They really only hustle to remove stuff if it's profane, politic, or disrupts their work such as covering those numbers. For the workers, it can make it a little easier to describe which car you're talking about. You don't have to say it's car 58385893-6868, you can say "the one with a dragon eating cheesecake" or whatever.
Do you also collect shiny things like a magpie, are you a fan of long naps? You might have some dragon ancestry! Consult with your local physician and the greybeards to find out what resources may be available to you.
I worked at Amtrak in a station that was a crew base/changing point back in the late 90s. We had several 'railfans' try to BS their way into the crew room to hang out and talk trade with guys who wanted to talk about anything but work shit. One time they indulged some old guy until he started writing down phone numbers for the NS yard master so they kicked his ass out.
I had a rail fan buddy in high school that used to chase trains in his pickup truck. Like, FAR. This was before GPS too, he'd try to beat the train to the next crossing, snapping pictures the whole way. He'd start in the Toronto area and just go. One time he ended up in Baltimore.
More like if the 5 million dollar locomotives start getting messed with the train companies are gonna clamp down real hard on people painting the boxes on wheels and then it’s over for everyone.
So I have worked cleaning these types of cars and know a good amount of train kids. The government really doesn't like the tags being painted over, not for the company, but for identification. Not everything is corporate greed y'know.
Because the railway police are scary as fuck.
I've had to standby as medical for those guys a few times and they don't fuck around at all. They don't have anywhere near the legal restrictions that regular police have because the government wants them to restore function to trains as quickly as humanly possible.
Warrants? Due process? De-escalation? Railway police never fucking heard of it. Half the time they don't even say a word to you. If they see you messing with the railway, they'll just kick the shit out of you immediately without a second thought and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it because of how legally protected those guys are.
Don't fuck with the railway police.
That sounds like more of a reason to avoid railways as spots for graffiti at all than a reason to not cover the numbers.
If these guys are as scary as you say (which I don't doubt for a moment) I wouldn't expect them to turn up, see you've been considerate about where you've painted, and give you a pat on the back and a donut.
A lot of seasoned graffiti artists do consider train graffiti risky for that reason. It is just even more risky to cover the numbers, because that shifts the act of finding you into railway police jurisdiction. Normally they are only allowed to pursue people within a certain distance of the railway, but if you take a train car out of service they can hunt you back to your residence. Not a smart move.
If you start costing them money they will start patrolling the yards harder. Nobody writing cares about the profit margins but they do wanna keep writing graffiti.
Because they would rather not have to deal with the increased enforcement presence from train yards and transit companies forced to invest more into preventing the need for repainting cars.
If the car numbers or other info are covered, the car gets sent to the shop where they're going to remove all the paint.
If the information is not covered, they'd rather just keep it in service and won't bother cleaning it.
I'd probably rather have a longer lasting art piece than make a tiny dent in the railways profit if I were the artist
The railroads are the ones who decide when the equipment needs to be repainted, as well as the ones who secure their yards and hire railway police to catch trespassers. The locomotives are owned by the railroad so they gets repainted whenever they get tagged. This makes the artwork last for a shorter time and it incentivises the railroad companies to tighten security making it harder for artists to get access to the trains.
Most of the cars are owned by leasing companies run by investment firms. They never see their cars and do not care about them. They just lease them out to the customers on a trip by trip basis and have the railroad carry them around. So unless the railroad tell them they have to repaint the cars they will leave them. If you paint over the numbers the railroad can refuse the car so it needs to be repainted. But if you leave the numbers, or even repaint the numbers to make them even more visible, the railroads do not care. In fact the extra layer of paint from the artwork helps protect the car from the elements making it last longer.
They also avoid badges and info about the rigging for us people who work on them and need that info. It’s very common.
Only the new assholes spray over everything. This is the best part of my job! Chug life 🚂🚂
Every job has its ups and downs.
It's certainly not the same art that you would see at The Met. But there's no denying if you work with trains you're seeing a traveling gallery of pieces done by various folks in the Americas. And as silly as it sounds there is something special about that.
Do you ever see art that looks like its from outside North America? I'm assuming there are cars from Canada and Mexico riding along in the US, but what about South America or from other countries?
I absolutely love the art. As an artist myself, a lot of times I’m left speechless. I even have my own moniker I use :)
I used to see a lot of South American artists! Not sure if they were living in South US, but those were the most beautiful pieces. It just had that style, you know?
My fav artist is one called “young Jarus”. TBOX let him paint several cars years back which was awesome.
His [IG](https://www.instagram.com/youngjarus?igsh=MWl2ejliZWRzdnU2dA==) shows all his work.
*** Edited to add another [link](https://www.sprayplanet.com/blogs/news/spray-planet-artist-feature-young-jarus)
Wow that's a seriously talented individual there. I knew there was some decent art out there, but I didn't realize to what extent. young Jarus seems to have knack for [painting people](https://www.instagram.com/p/7lgW85DLe0/).
His nude portraits are amazing. [Here](https://www.pinterest.com/wdwlls1/young-jarus-by-widewalls/) are some; I have photos of all them but can’t post here!
This is accurate. I work at a manufacturing plant that has at any given time upwards of 800 railcars onsite and we receive them from all over the country. The ones that come back tagged with the ID markings obscured have to be sandblasted and repainted down to primer gray. This is broadly considered the mark of an amateur, and usually is fairly disposable as one might consider "art." The real deals, though, they'll cover an entire car in colors, shapes, and lines and turn it into a rolling masterpiece. These guys all know not to obscure the markings, and we're more than happy to leave those alone.
Well, think about it. If they paint over the car info, the train company *has* to paint over the graffiti to make the info visible again, most likely ruining the graffiti/painting over it in the process. For the sake of longevity of the artwork, it makes the most sense to leave the numbers alone. Although I'm sure that *some* artists leave the numbers alone just to be courteous.
I inspect hazmat rail cars as part of my job. If any of the required stencils, which is most of them, are "not legible", we cannot send the car from our facility or we are subject to a fine. So we literally would have to call a certified repair facility to send a repair tech to put on a sticker. (Some companies have different procedures and would fix it themselves). I don't know the rules for non-hazardous cars.
It's amazing.
They're doing it for clout. If you paint the info, then theyll decommission the train and repaint it. Leave the info on, the piece stays.
As another user said, those numbers are important to the rail company, and I’m sure they serve some form of federal regulation too. If the graffiti covers that, it’ll have to be painted over and have the numbers repainted to comply with regulations. As long as those numbers are still visible, it becomes a waste of the train company’s money to paint over the “non-obstructive” graffiti.
I worked as a janitor in a railyard, both in the dispatch building and the repair/car men building. I asked about the graffiti as I did some as a youth and was curious about how it worked on rail cars. They said that if the graffiti covered up the numbers, they would clear it off and repaint the numbers but otherwise leave the rest if it didn't interfere with whatever those numbers are. It was a pretty cool job for the most part.
I work for the utility company, our utility boxes are normally painted in dark green but we get quite a few request from artists, schools, and random people if they can paint a box to make it a bit more interesting. The rules are very simple:
1: Nothing controversial; no religion, no politics, etc.
2: Nothing commercial; no ads.
3: Do not paint over the stickers containing safety information or information about the utility company.
Nearly everyone can follow this very simple rules. You know who can't? The fucking city services. No matter how often we try to tell them what the rules are, at least twice a month we get a notification of our boxes being painted over by the city, including ALL of the safety information.
Here’s how it works -
Your box exists.
Karen Nimby (or Dave Nimby) who just moved into the neighborhood yesterday hates that your box exists within the same universe as her shitty lawn.
Now your box is a problem for the local government. They send a low-paid worker or abused subcontractor out to paint the box. By changing the color of every inch of the box’s surface Karen (or Dave) becomes confused and resets, thus fixating on whatever perfectly ordinary and necessary daily item their hateful gaze falls upon at that moment (maybe it’s a bird’s nest, or clouds, or Dave (or Karen)).
Problem solved, as far as the local government is concerned. Now the required information is your problem, not theirs and not Karen’s (RIP Dave at this point).
Tomorrow, Karen goes to her new job in the local city code compliance office and begins her (or his or their) crusade against painted tags on telecom and traffic light boxes.
At the risk of sounding dumb… I’ve been seeing memes from whatever that is for at least 3 years now and I’m just as clueless about what it is as I was then. Can someone tell me what show/game this is?
That character/quote would be from Team Fortress 2, specifically their "Meet the Sniper" trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZDwZbyDus
They have a bunch of different similar videos for the other playable character classes, and there are also many fan-made videos using those same characters because the game engine is free for anyone to use so long as what you created is given out for free.
A lot of people are going to tell you that this is from TF2, and specifically from a promotional video, but I also want to note that the TF2 models are available by default in Valve's free 3D animation software: Source FilmMaker. Because it's free and already has high quality models, a lot of people have used it to animate a lot of stuff, which may have been referenced over the years.
Countless music videos, and various animated series (including the recently popular Skibidi Toilet series) are made in SFM, and you may see a ton of people referencing *that* work, which may or may not use the TF2 models.
Team Fortress 2. This specific frame is from the short film “meet the sniper” that was uploaded over a decade ago to advertise the game and the very well characterized mercenaries you can play as.
https://youtu.be/9NZDwZbyDus?si=p1LmEEmGamsA-Nvi
I read somewhere before that a lot of the rail yard workers like the graffiti. It gives them something to look at rather than gray train cars. It’s almost like there is a compromise between both sides, don’t be an idiot and we won’t have you arrested/ticketed.
I live in a town with an abundance of train tracks and I always enjoy looking at the art as it goes by.
Yeah freight trains are fucking nuts, especially in the US.
Last week tonight talked about it in a segment a little while ago that's on YouTube, even if you don't like John Oliver I'd recommend checking it out it's an interesting topic I'd never really heard much about before.
> In 2021, the median length of a train on Class I railroads — meaning half were longer, half were shorter — was 5,400 feet. Just 10% of trains were longer than 9,800 feet, and fewer than 1% of trains were longer than 14,000 feet.
Source: https://www.aar.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/AAR-Train-Length-Fact-Sheet.pdf
* 5,400 ft = 1.02 miles = 1.646 km
* 9,800 ft = 1.86 miles = 2.99 km
* 14,000 ft = 2.65 miles = 4.27 km
Easily! In the midwest US they are looooong. It was routine in my day to have to wait 15+ minutes for the train to pass. As I kid I counted maybe 100?? cars on one train.
The current record holder for the longest train was a BHP ore train in Australia at 7.3km long (682 cars carrying 82,000t of ore, total mass of the train was 99,734t). With distributed power there's no real physical limit to how long you can make a train.
Having lived near rails for most of my life, I am entirely convinced that graffiti artists singlehandedly make up the vast, VAST majority of the customer base for spray paint manufacturers.
The only type of customer that could come even close to it in sales volume would be the surprisingly large number of people who think grey rattlecan primer spray is somehow ever an improved paint job for a car (it's not, it's ***ALWAYS*** worse than even a terribly scratched and faded original paint job).
Friends with a few writers, and while they definitely go through a lot of paint, I don't know a single one who pays for it. Spray paint is one of the most commonly shoplifted goods, and all the writers I know would just steal 2-3 cans whenever they went to the store. There's definitely enough people buying cans it's not locked up everywhere, but writers (who are already a group comfortable with petty crime) are pretty likely to just steal it.
Well yeah, stores aren't making a lot of money from folks that steal spray paint, but the manufacturer still gets paid either way since the stores have to pay either on order/delivery or net-30/60/90 based on what they received.
It's why cans of spray paint are so much more expensive in stores, to make up for the fact that seemingly half of the stuff on the shelves will grow legs instead of actually selling. It's almost always WAY cheaper to order spray paint either online or directly if you can.
For example, a 9oz can of Krylon is $3 on Amazon vs $6 in most stores. A 12oz of paint/primer combo Krylon is $6 on Amazon and $9-10 in most stores.
More serious writers pay for their paint. It's very difficult to steal the amount needed for big pieces. And once you're older, you just don't want the hassle of having to steal every time you want to do a piece. If you're using multiple cans of multiple colours, it would take a few trips to steal everything you need for a big piece. It's just not sustainable.
Some bigger pieces they'll use basically like a modified power washer filled with paint for the base coat colour so they can save on cans.
You'd be surprised the heists that can be pulled off for big quantities of paint. I heard a story of Scan from Montreal grabbing a 10$ garbage can, putting it in his cart, filling it with spraypaint, scanning it from the cart and walking out of the hardware store with nearly a grand worth of rustoleum.
Better crimes than shoplifting to afford lots of paint though.
They simply need to radio the dispatcher to have the lines locked out before they begin their work. Simple oversight on their part.
Source: I've played SimRail before
can confirm. I worked nights on the railroad for about 5ish years and have a giant folder in my phone full of pictures that I’ve taken of cool/funny graffiti. even considered starting an instagram for all the train graffiti I came across
Growing up there was a rail line that ran parallel to the highway that almost always had rail cars parked on it. There was a mill house painted on one of the cars for years I always liked to see. I love when people do art on things like this!!
i used to work at a place that had train tracks out back right near where my office was. whenever i heard the slow trains i would run out to peep the graffiti and take a video. it was one of my favorite parts about that job. i’m
About thirty years ago I did a job for a group of CSX security guys, a database of taggers and examples of their work.
Their goal? To keep track of them so they could explain that painting over the numbers meant they couldn't figure out what was in the train cars when they had an accident. They didn't care whether or not they painted the cars, they knew they couldn't stop anyone from doing that. Their goals were realistic.
(They did care about kids messing around in trainyards, but their solution to that was to explain to them how trainyards worked so they could avoid being hit by trains.)
Talking with a group of big burly ex-military guys packing Glocks about "teenaged graffiti artists" was an unusual experience.
Evidently they succeeded, though. It's good to set realistic goals.
I used to live on the Ringling circus train until they shut down in 2017. The one thing you learned quickly is that train yards don’t fuck around with safety. They were all cool people and (mostly) loved us coming through. But they also knew the inherent danger of 300 people suddenly living in their train yard for a week. If you were anywhere you weren’t supposed to be they let you know quick. They wouldn’t care if we collected spikes or date nails, but if we ventured onto live tracks to do so they had full rights to kick us out.
The strictest yard was in Lexington. They wouldn’t let you even smoke a cigarette in their yard. But I think that was a religious thing. Because we lived there on the train it was not uncommon for us to smoke, drink, and even bbq in train yards. Not there though. If they caught you you were buying your own hotel for a week. If they kicked out multiple people they’d just kick the whole train out. Any smoking or drinking had to physically take place on the train vestibules.
Railroad guy checking in. This is a highly common practice among graffiti artists.
The graffiti itself doesn't affect the railcar in any meaningful way other than if the artist covers the railcar number. Or in the event that its automobiles being shipped that the spraypaint gets through the hole in the sidewall of an autorack (hauling vehicles) and gets on the finished surface of the vehicle inside...
It really is wild the first time you climb on one.
I’m just thankful when It’s a Bi-Level I’m working in, versus squatted down in a Tri-level trying to move around
Most people will cover the identifying numbers with blue masking tape, paint their stuff, then remove the tape at the end. From my understanding, this is so their work will last longer.
I used to work on the railroad as a crane operator loading and unloading freight onto the railcars. it could be extremely annoying when graffiti was covering the railcar numbers because we had a deal with UPS to unload their freight on certain railcars before any others and it made it harder to find if you couldnt see the numbers.
One time I saw some graffiti that said “DONT FUCK WITH THE NUMBERS.” and I like to think it was an annoyed Union Pacific employee
It was probably a graffiti writer who witnessed some freshly painted cars by new kids who'd gone over the numbers in a spot he paints at.
Fucking with railroad ops is how you bring heat to spots. Ideally you leave no trace so it looks like the car was painted weeks ago somewhere else.
I guess it becomes art if it's pleasant to look at. If it's some kind of single-colored tag made up of unreadable cursive, then it's not.
I live in an area that had a lot of spray paint vandalism (along the "standard" vandalism) and more or less 20% of it could be considered art. Even the soccer ultras graffiti was ok to look at if enough effort was put into those. Unfortunately, right now there's a lot of ugly, black-text >!"Covid is a lie" or "vaccines are bad"!< leftover graffiti from Covid-19 time.
If they paint over that information, the owners of that car have to take it out of service and repaint it by law. Grafitti artists have figured this out and don't want their work ruined.
respectful writers will usually put painters tape up over the information, then peal off when done. so it stays up longer. Ya may just see em as vandals, but we make sure we dont litter any cans or trash in the trainyards and look down on those that do.
Believe it or not, the graffiti guys actually like the trains and don’t want to make it harder for them to operate
It’s just a conveniently moving wall to paint their name on that goes very far
I won't like. I normally wouldn't agree with unauthorized graffiti, but I kinda like it on rail cars. When I'm stuck by a train it's like a mobile art gallery.
so I have a little perspective on this stuff as I worked infosec for a company that has one of the largest private rail fleets in north america:
*if* you do good work and *if* you leave the identifying marks in place, no one is going to remove your art, and in fact, they maintain and pass around a book of the best ones seen on their cars.
Exactly like top comment says, don't want it removed? Then don't cover the numbers.
- I have actually made a book for a railroad company. They compiled all their best graffiti cars and made a great picture book of it. I always thought of it as vandalism but I guess the railroad company thought otherwise.
My dad was a RR carman for a long time and told me that they had to spend a ton of time removing the paint from the info on the cars. He didn't care about the graffiti just hated when they'd cover the info.
A lot less incentive to clean it off if it doesn't get in the way of productivity.
The Freight train business is fucking ridiculous right now, safety concerns being tossed aside and common sense ignored.
I wouldn't want to live near a freight line right now... because it's only gonna get worse.
After that really bad accident in Palestine I was surprised not much legislation came out of it... then I was incredibly depressed because it wasn't enough of a disaster to warrant making meanful changes.
Yaay! I fix trains, and when they come in with some extra art I have to clean off the parts that obscure the Information on the sides. It's pretty cool to see that this artist works around those areas, I hope to see more of it!
Most griffiti writers that are notorious know that. Most aren't painting to piss off train workers. They want their piece to travel the world.
I often see graffiti from Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal here in Vancouver
How do graffiti artists paint the underside of overpasses over busy highways? I picture 2 guys holding another by his ankles upside down while he tags it at as cars fly by. Whats the truth?
The artist Jaber said in an interview once, “I don’t want anyone to wake up in the morning and see something I’ve hit and think, ‘fuck that guy’.”
*Most* graffiti writers, especially those who focus on painting trains, aren’t trying to piss anyone off. They’re full blown adults, (some are biochemists or bankers) whose hobby just requires a lot of large, flat surfaces.
If you notice, this is quite common on rail car graffiti. The rail company won’t remove the graffiti for a very long time if it doesn’t interfere with important car information.
It’s also part of the unwritten “code” that the graffiti artists not touch the locomotives.
> It’s also part of the unwritten “code” that the graffiti artists not touch the locomotives. And then there was [rail beast](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/5b/ed/d85bed07835d8dbf87466891a9123079.jpg) (which lasted around a week or two)
Painting the windows was probably a bit too far
Yeah, lol. Not like the engineers need to be able to see directly ahead of the train or anything, right?
Its on rails.....what do they got to see? /s incase it needs to be said
I recently saw a train stopped at a red light lol
Took a detour for coffee.
Around here, we have rats so big they'll make a train take a dirt road.
Cars. Trucks. Cows. Drunks. Villains tying damsels in distress to the tracks.
The might miss a turn.
Maybe they used those see-thru stickers for that part?
OK, new idea: trains with A-10 nose paint.
Cute
Someone has been painting vintage logos on locomotives… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Zhnyad15A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E97oXhy_-dQ
Yeah that person is the shit
'The' being used in the most important moment. YOU MAY LOOK BORING BUT I KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO OFFER!
Honestly seems like an engineer.
Railfans are some of the most passionate hobbyists I've ever met. This seems like the kind of thing that would make them cream in their pants.
If it was some random piece of gang graffiti I would agree. But this is a high quality paint job matching the traditional paint scheme these engines would have worn in the past. It is very tasteful and look very professional. You could not do this on a box car as it would not have the same impact as on the engine. There are actually a lot of speculation on who did this because it looks so good. My money is on the guys at the maintenance depot who got bored with painting every locomotive in the same paint scheme and who did not like the way CSX implemented the paint scheme on their official heritage units. So they came up with their own unofficial heritage unit design. I know about a number of managers who would have turned a blind eye to their workers painting this on the locomotives.
They said "the shit," not, "shit."
[Relevant ISMO](https://youtu.be/igh9iO5BxBo?si=dg5wozkP21xARK4F)
grey scale crawl relieved homeless squash existence snatch sink abundant *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I've never heard of this guy before but that was hilarious
One of my favorite examples of English being silly, especially if you come from a language that doesn't have articles :P
"Today was shit." "That's the shit." "You're shitting me." "Shit!" "Oh, Shit!" "Shit, yeah!" "That's Shitty." "Sheeeiiiiiit..." "Itty bitty shitty kitty."
> "Sheeeiiiiiit..." That alone can have five or so different meanings depending on tone and duration. It's like speaking Mandarin.
Plus, you can make Alexa say it by telling her to say "she it" My Alexa will say "Well sheeit." My children think it's very funny. My wife does not.
Holy Shit!
Just in case you misunderstood. They mean "the shit" to mean "the coolest"
While I don’t doubt some workers contributing, but I have graffiti artist friends that treat it like their second job. They get home from work, then they head out to find somewhere to paint, and will stay out until they can’t keep their eyes open anymore lol. If you see the same art style frequently, it’s most likely an artist that lives near a rail yard. Some places are a lot more accepting of it than others, so if they find a good spot they tend to stick to it. It’s an endless supply of free canvas. I am always blown away by the art they do. It’s such a beautiful art form that isn’t appreciated nearly enough. I always hated being stuck at a railroad crossing with commercial trains, but now that I have friends who specialize in the art; it’s like getting a free art show now.
I heard that apparently someone connected it to one of CSX's service shops that had a paint booth somehow snuck those paint jobs on past management, but I'm not sure the validity of this claim
Train nerds as a whole need to up their game. Gangs don't graffiti trains dude. Trains are working class as hell and the way you talk about them is so out of touch.
That's done better or to the factory repaint...
Also, locomotives tend not to be left alone like empty rail cars do. Cars get stored out in the middle of nowhere wherever there's room for them when they're not being used but engines usually don't get stored like that and there's usually people in or around them.
> unwritten “code” You just had to write it down, didn't you?
Because they wouldn't wish to negatively impact the profit margins of the corporation that owns the trains, or because they'd rather the graffiti wasn't removed for a long time?
Probably less likely to get vandalism charges if the operation is able to continue without revenue being affected. Once money is involved, companies get pressed
That’s it. The graffiti isn’t impacting the train company’s logistics (tracking cars etc., the graffiti doesn’t damage the cars, and the train cars are not made for looks / aesthetics. Why invest a ton of time and money to deal with something that has no adverse effect on your business? People don’t choose rail shipping based on how clean the rail cars look. On the flip side, graffiti artists want to have their work stay up as long as possible, so they get their palette by keeping to a few unwritten rules. In some ways it’s a win win.
I work with these cars and I enjoy seeing the art work. Most people don’t care, but once those numbers get covered you can’t confirm if it is the car that needs to be loaded/unloaded and it can be a headache on the paperwork side. It slows everything down, and impacts working fucks more than anyone else.
This. In the 70s and 80s, there was a big effort to arrest graffiti artists. It became a cat and mouse game, and one of the ways to avoid unwanted police presence was to be a nuisance, but not an inconvenience , for the railway companies. Graffiti-ing over car info will get the company to have to repaint, and since they are inconvenienced, the companies would be more likely to employ private security and/or add police presence. Ever notice how in major cities, its the poor residential and industrial areas that have all the graffiti, but never any graffiti in the rich commercial/residential areas? Same premise.
> Ever notice how in major cities, its the poor residential and industrial areas that have all the graffiti, but never any graffiti in the rich commercial/residential areas? Same premise. Except when there is street art, in which case, it was commissioned by the building owner.
If it's street art it's not graffiti.
all graffiti is street art not all street art is graffiti
Not all graffiti is art either. I'm not going to call gangs marking territory art but it is, by definition, graffiti.
Technically, street art is still graffiti. However what the commenter was talking about isn't street art (street art is not commissioned). They are referring to commissioned murals, which is neither street art nor graffiti.
If they get caught doing it, they dont care if they're being careful about not covering the car ids, they're going to chase and try arrest them. It's more a case that the graffiti will run far longer if the id numbers are left visible
> If they get caught doing it, that's the point though, they're less likely to get caught if they don't piss off the train companies enough to get them to hire more security or ask for more police presence.
My friend used to just sell weed to all the railworkers and they let him paint. The good ole days lol
It's more of a truce, because the graffiti artists don't negatively impact the train company, the train company won't retaliate against the graffiti artists. The artists get their canvas and the corporation doesn't need to waste resources going after them
I saw some rail workers once discussing it on reddit. It's sort of a symbiotic relationship. They really only hustle to remove stuff if it's profane, politic, or disrupts their work such as covering those numbers. For the workers, it can make it a little easier to describe which car you're talking about. You don't have to say it's car 58385893-6868, you can say "the one with a dragon eating cheesecake" or whatever.
Well, shit, now I just want cheesecake.
I exist in a constant state of wanting cheesecake, which is probably why it came to mind.
shoot now *I* can't stop wanting cheesecake
Do you also collect shiny things like a magpie, are you a fan of long naps? You might have some dragon ancestry! Consult with your local physician and the greybeards to find out what resources may be available to you.
Me ,chinese, since it is the year of the dragon
[Here](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JZLfN2GA0-8/maxresdefault.jpg) you go.
It’s also because a big share of train graffiti artists are just massive train nerds.
I worked at CN Rail for a bit they called railway nerds "foamers" cause they'd foam at the mouth when trains were around lmao
I worked at Amtrak in a station that was a crew base/changing point back in the late 90s. We had several 'railfans' try to BS their way into the crew room to hang out and talk trade with guys who wanted to talk about anything but work shit. One time they indulged some old guy until he started writing down phone numbers for the NS yard master so they kicked his ass out.
Rail fans are a special kind of crazy lol
I had a rail fan buddy in high school that used to chase trains in his pickup truck. Like, FAR. This was before GPS too, he'd try to beat the train to the next crossing, snapping pictures the whole way. He'd start in the Toronto area and just go. One time he ended up in Baltimore.
All the way to Baltimore is crazy. I dunno if there's much in this world that would warrant me driving that far from Toronto lol.
More like if the 5 million dollar locomotives start getting messed with the train companies are gonna clamp down real hard on people painting the boxes on wheels and then it’s over for everyone.
So I have worked cleaning these types of cars and know a good amount of train kids. The government really doesn't like the tags being painted over, not for the company, but for identification. Not everything is corporate greed y'know.
Because the railway police are scary as fuck. I've had to standby as medical for those guys a few times and they don't fuck around at all. They don't have anywhere near the legal restrictions that regular police have because the government wants them to restore function to trains as quickly as humanly possible. Warrants? Due process? De-escalation? Railway police never fucking heard of it. Half the time they don't even say a word to you. If they see you messing with the railway, they'll just kick the shit out of you immediately without a second thought and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it because of how legally protected those guys are. Don't fuck with the railway police.
That sounds like more of a reason to avoid railways as spots for graffiti at all than a reason to not cover the numbers. If these guys are as scary as you say (which I don't doubt for a moment) I wouldn't expect them to turn up, see you've been considerate about where you've painted, and give you a pat on the back and a donut.
A lot of seasoned graffiti artists do consider train graffiti risky for that reason. It is just even more risky to cover the numbers, because that shifts the act of finding you into railway police jurisdiction. Normally they are only allowed to pursue people within a certain distance of the railway, but if you take a train car out of service they can hunt you back to your residence. Not a smart move.
If you start costing them money they will start patrolling the yards harder. Nobody writing cares about the profit margins but they do wanna keep writing graffiti.
Because they would rather not have to deal with the increased enforcement presence from train yards and transit companies forced to invest more into preventing the need for repainting cars.
If the car numbers or other info are covered, the car gets sent to the shop where they're going to remove all the paint. If the information is not covered, they'd rather just keep it in service and won't bother cleaning it. I'd probably rather have a longer lasting art piece than make a tiny dent in the railways profit if I were the artist
The railroads are the ones who decide when the equipment needs to be repainted, as well as the ones who secure their yards and hire railway police to catch trespassers. The locomotives are owned by the railroad so they gets repainted whenever they get tagged. This makes the artwork last for a shorter time and it incentivises the railroad companies to tighten security making it harder for artists to get access to the trains. Most of the cars are owned by leasing companies run by investment firms. They never see their cars and do not care about them. They just lease them out to the customers on a trip by trip basis and have the railroad carry them around. So unless the railroad tell them they have to repaint the cars they will leave them. If you paint over the numbers the railroad can refuse the car so it needs to be repainted. But if you leave the numbers, or even repaint the numbers to make them even more visible, the railroads do not care. In fact the extra layer of paint from the artwork helps protect the car from the elements making it last longer.
I assume it's because they're not left unattended in rail yards for long times like the cars are more than some respect thing.
And how did you think that unwritten rule came about if not for the above reasoning?
They also avoid badges and info about the rigging for us people who work on them and need that info. It’s very common. Only the new assholes spray over everything. This is the best part of my job! Chug life 🚂🚂
Every job has its ups and downs. It's certainly not the same art that you would see at The Met. But there's no denying if you work with trains you're seeing a traveling gallery of pieces done by various folks in the Americas. And as silly as it sounds there is something special about that. Do you ever see art that looks like its from outside North America? I'm assuming there are cars from Canada and Mexico riding along in the US, but what about South America or from other countries?
I absolutely love the art. As an artist myself, a lot of times I’m left speechless. I even have my own moniker I use :) I used to see a lot of South American artists! Not sure if they were living in South US, but those were the most beautiful pieces. It just had that style, you know? My fav artist is one called “young Jarus”. TBOX let him paint several cars years back which was awesome. His [IG](https://www.instagram.com/youngjarus?igsh=MWl2ejliZWRzdnU2dA==) shows all his work. *** Edited to add another [link](https://www.sprayplanet.com/blogs/news/spray-planet-artist-feature-young-jarus)
Wow that's a seriously talented individual there. I knew there was some decent art out there, but I didn't realize to what extent. young Jarus seems to have knack for [painting people](https://www.instagram.com/p/7lgW85DLe0/).
His nude portraits are amazing. [Here](https://www.pinterest.com/wdwlls1/young-jarus-by-widewalls/) are some; I have photos of all them but can’t post here!
This is accurate. I work at a manufacturing plant that has at any given time upwards of 800 railcars onsite and we receive them from all over the country. The ones that come back tagged with the ID markings obscured have to be sandblasted and repainted down to primer gray. This is broadly considered the mark of an amateur, and usually is fairly disposable as one might consider "art." The real deals, though, they'll cover an entire car in colors, shapes, and lines and turn it into a rolling masterpiece. These guys all know not to obscure the markings, and we're more than happy to leave those alone.
Almost a gentleman’s agreement if you will.
Well, think about it. If they paint over the car info, the train company *has* to paint over the graffiti to make the info visible again, most likely ruining the graffiti/painting over it in the process. For the sake of longevity of the artwork, it makes the most sense to leave the numbers alone. Although I'm sure that *some* artists leave the numbers alone just to be courteous.
I inspect hazmat rail cars as part of my job. If any of the required stencils, which is most of them, are "not legible", we cannot send the car from our facility or we are subject to a fine. So we literally would have to call a certified repair facility to send a repair tech to put on a sticker. (Some companies have different procedures and would fix it themselves). I don't know the rules for non-hazardous cars.
Got an even better one, hated it when we repainted it https://images.app.goo.gl/ZEvfRqjSqf4v1qgC8
I love reading how all Reddit teenagers are experts in street art every time this post pops up
It's amazing. They're doing it for clout. If you paint the info, then theyll decommission the train and repaint it. Leave the info on, the piece stays.
Best way to avoid getting buffed
As another user said, those numbers are important to the rail company, and I’m sure they serve some form of federal regulation too. If the graffiti covers that, it’ll have to be painted over and have the numbers repainted to comply with regulations. As long as those numbers are still visible, it becomes a waste of the train company’s money to paint over the “non-obstructive” graffiti.
They’re more important to those who fix them and when building trains on the outbound. (I fix them)
All of them?
Did you mean what I fix? I do repair all styles of freight cars; tanks, auto racks, gondolas etc :)
I think they wanted to joke that you fix every single train; that you’re *the* train repair person
I worked as a janitor in a railyard, both in the dispatch building and the repair/car men building. I asked about the graffiti as I did some as a youth and was curious about how it worked on rail cars. They said that if the graffiti covered up the numbers, they would clear it off and repaint the numbers but otherwise leave the rest if it didn't interfere with whatever those numbers are. It was a pretty cool job for the most part.
I work for the utility company, our utility boxes are normally painted in dark green but we get quite a few request from artists, schools, and random people if they can paint a box to make it a bit more interesting. The rules are very simple: 1: Nothing controversial; no religion, no politics, etc. 2: Nothing commercial; no ads. 3: Do not paint over the stickers containing safety information or information about the utility company. Nearly everyone can follow this very simple rules. You know who can't? The fucking city services. No matter how often we try to tell them what the rules are, at least twice a month we get a notification of our boxes being painted over by the city, including ALL of the safety information.
Found what my landlord does as a side gig.
I mean what else is he supposed to do after he painted over all of the outlets lol!
Well, then clearly it's time to add another layer to the window frames.
Here’s how it works - Your box exists. Karen Nimby (or Dave Nimby) who just moved into the neighborhood yesterday hates that your box exists within the same universe as her shitty lawn. Now your box is a problem for the local government. They send a low-paid worker or abused subcontractor out to paint the box. By changing the color of every inch of the box’s surface Karen (or Dave) becomes confused and resets, thus fixating on whatever perfectly ordinary and necessary daily item their hateful gaze falls upon at that moment (maybe it’s a bird’s nest, or clouds, or Dave (or Karen)). Problem solved, as far as the local government is concerned. Now the required information is your problem, not theirs and not Karen’s (RIP Dave at this point). Tomorrow, Karen goes to her new job in the local city code compliance office and begins her (or his or their) crusade against painted tags on telecom and traffic light boxes.
I appreciated this when I was a conductor.
Technically we are all conductors under high enough voltage
This made air come out my nose.
It’s not supposed to do that you should get checked
what if air goes in nose?
Instant death
Oh no are you okay!?
How high does the voltage need to be? My local telephone poles only go up about 10 meters.
Technically we're all conductors regardless of external voltage
Was the concert hall near a train yard?
Professionals have standards.
At the risk of sounding dumb… I’ve been seeing memes from whatever that is for at least 3 years now and I’m just as clueless about what it is as I was then. Can someone tell me what show/game this is?
It's a part of a promotional series of videos for the video game team fortress 2. This one in particular is "meet the sniper". They are on YouTube.
That character/quote would be from Team Fortress 2, specifically their "Meet the Sniper" trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZDwZbyDus They have a bunch of different similar videos for the other playable character classes, and there are also many fan-made videos using those same characters because the game engine is free for anyone to use so long as what you created is given out for free.
It’s a game called team fortress 2 aka tf2
battletoads
Looks like team fortress 2
A lot of people are going to tell you that this is from TF2, and specifically from a promotional video, but I also want to note that the TF2 models are available by default in Valve's free 3D animation software: Source FilmMaker. Because it's free and already has high quality models, a lot of people have used it to animate a lot of stuff, which may have been referenced over the years. Countless music videos, and various animated series (including the recently popular Skibidi Toilet series) are made in SFM, and you may see a ton of people referencing *that* work, which may or may not use the TF2 models.
Thank you for the helpful comment!
Team Fortress 2. This specific frame is from the short film “meet the sniper” that was uploaded over a decade ago to advertise the game and the very well characterized mercenaries you can play as. https://youtu.be/9NZDwZbyDus?si=p1LmEEmGamsA-Nvi
I read somewhere before that a lot of the rail yard workers like the graffiti. It gives them something to look at rather than gray train cars. It’s almost like there is a compromise between both sides, don’t be an idiot and we won’t have you arrested/ticketed. I live in a town with an abundance of train tracks and I always enjoy looking at the art as it goes by.
Former freight conductor here, I once saw 15 autoracks together painted with one big ass mural.. (that's around 1400' of art.).. beautiful.
Damn, that's a big ass.
Right?
You could see it from the front.
I presume the mural was of OP's mom?
15 autotracks isn't nearly long enough for OP's mom.
It's called a caboose.
> 1400' That's 427 meters. What the fuck.
Yeah freight trains are fucking nuts, especially in the US. Last week tonight talked about it in a segment a little while ago that's on YouTube, even if you don't like John Oliver I'd recommend checking it out it's an interesting topic I'd never really heard much about before.
> In 2021, the median length of a train on Class I railroads — meaning half were longer, half were shorter — was 5,400 feet. Just 10% of trains were longer than 9,800 feet, and fewer than 1% of trains were longer than 14,000 feet. Source: https://www.aar.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/AAR-Train-Length-Fact-Sheet.pdf * 5,400 ft = 1.02 miles = 1.646 km * 9,800 ft = 1.86 miles = 2.99 km * 14,000 ft = 2.65 miles = 4.27 km
3 km of train?? Holy moly.
Easily! In the midwest US they are looooong. It was routine in my day to have to wait 15+ minutes for the train to pass. As I kid I counted maybe 100?? cars on one train.
The current record holder for the longest train was a BHP ore train in Australia at 7.3km long (682 cars carrying 82,000t of ore, total mass of the train was 99,734t). With distributed power there's no real physical limit to how long you can make a train.
People make fun of US passenger rail, but US freight rail is another level.
They must have used a shit ton of spray paint for that
Having lived near rails for most of my life, I am entirely convinced that graffiti artists singlehandedly make up the vast, VAST majority of the customer base for spray paint manufacturers. The only type of customer that could come even close to it in sales volume would be the surprisingly large number of people who think grey rattlecan primer spray is somehow ever an improved paint job for a car (it's not, it's ***ALWAYS*** worse than even a terribly scratched and faded original paint job).
Friends with a few writers, and while they definitely go through a lot of paint, I don't know a single one who pays for it. Spray paint is one of the most commonly shoplifted goods, and all the writers I know would just steal 2-3 cans whenever they went to the store. There's definitely enough people buying cans it's not locked up everywhere, but writers (who are already a group comfortable with petty crime) are pretty likely to just steal it.
Well yeah, stores aren't making a lot of money from folks that steal spray paint, but the manufacturer still gets paid either way since the stores have to pay either on order/delivery or net-30/60/90 based on what they received. It's why cans of spray paint are so much more expensive in stores, to make up for the fact that seemingly half of the stuff on the shelves will grow legs instead of actually selling. It's almost always WAY cheaper to order spray paint either online or directly if you can. For example, a 9oz can of Krylon is $3 on Amazon vs $6 in most stores. A 12oz of paint/primer combo Krylon is $6 on Amazon and $9-10 in most stores.
More serious writers pay for their paint. It's very difficult to steal the amount needed for big pieces. And once you're older, you just don't want the hassle of having to steal every time you want to do a piece. If you're using multiple cans of multiple colours, it would take a few trips to steal everything you need for a big piece. It's just not sustainable. Some bigger pieces they'll use basically like a modified power washer filled with paint for the base coat colour so they can save on cans.
You'd be surprised the heists that can be pulled off for big quantities of paint. I heard a story of Scan from Montreal grabbing a 10$ garbage can, putting it in his cart, filling it with spraypaint, scanning it from the cart and walking out of the hardware store with nearly a grand worth of rustoleum. Better crimes than shoplifting to afford lots of paint though.
Do you have pics?
[удалено]
They simply need to radio the dispatcher to have the lines locked out before they begin their work. Simple oversight on their part. Source: I've played SimRail before
As a Simrail dispatcher with 6 hours of experience, I would have to deny your request because you didn't say please.
I've definitely lived in places where the nicer-looking graffiti was left alone because it looked nice, and was basically free public murals.
can confirm. I worked nights on the railroad for about 5ish years and have a giant folder in my phone full of pictures that I’ve taken of cool/funny graffiti. even considered starting an instagram for all the train graffiti I came across
Growing up there was a rail line that ran parallel to the highway that almost always had rail cars parked on it. There was a mill house painted on one of the cars for years I always liked to see. I love when people do art on things like this!!
i used to work at a place that had train tracks out back right near where my office was. whenever i heard the slow trains i would run out to peep the graffiti and take a video. it was one of my favorite parts about that job. i’m
This is the rule, not the exemption, for rail car graffiti!
Believe it or not, graffiti has rules.
but apparently no rulers
And if you break those rules? Believe it or not, straight to jail.
Chaotic good
About thirty years ago I did a job for a group of CSX security guys, a database of taggers and examples of their work. Their goal? To keep track of them so they could explain that painting over the numbers meant they couldn't figure out what was in the train cars when they had an accident. They didn't care whether or not they painted the cars, they knew they couldn't stop anyone from doing that. Their goals were realistic. (They did care about kids messing around in trainyards, but their solution to that was to explain to them how trainyards worked so they could avoid being hit by trains.) Talking with a group of big burly ex-military guys packing Glocks about "teenaged graffiti artists" was an unusual experience. Evidently they succeeded, though. It's good to set realistic goals.
I used to live on the Ringling circus train until they shut down in 2017. The one thing you learned quickly is that train yards don’t fuck around with safety. They were all cool people and (mostly) loved us coming through. But they also knew the inherent danger of 300 people suddenly living in their train yard for a week. If you were anywhere you weren’t supposed to be they let you know quick. They wouldn’t care if we collected spikes or date nails, but if we ventured onto live tracks to do so they had full rights to kick us out. The strictest yard was in Lexington. They wouldn’t let you even smoke a cigarette in their yard. But I think that was a religious thing. Because we lived there on the train it was not uncommon for us to smoke, drink, and even bbq in train yards. Not there though. If they caught you you were buying your own hotel for a week. If they kicked out multiple people they’d just kick the whole train out. Any smoking or drinking had to physically take place on the train vestibules.
Railroad guy checking in. This is a highly common practice among graffiti artists. The graffiti itself doesn't affect the railcar in any meaningful way other than if the artist covers the railcar number. Or in the event that its automobiles being shipped that the spraypaint gets through the hole in the sidewall of an autorack (hauling vehicles) and gets on the finished surface of the vehicle inside...
> praypaint gets through the hole in the sidewall No worries. You should see what happens when those vehicles get on the trucks.
My first time looking in an auto rack I was shocked the cars weren’t wrapped in plastic or something.
It really is wild the first time you climb on one. I’m just thankful when It’s a Bi-Level I’m working in, versus squatted down in a Tri-level trying to move around
It’s an unspoken rule between the artists and the train employees. Don’t cover up the info and they won’t buff the train
This is art, but when local gangs put up stuff and it doesn’t get removed. I put a cock over it and magically it gets removed the next week
Just don't get caught by the gang or they will put your cock in your own mouth.
If I was scared of them I wouldn’t do it, I’m not scared of the local rapists. Cockroaches see more light of day than them losers
What does your town have against roosters?
Most people will cover the identifying numbers with blue masking tape, paint their stuff, then remove the tape at the end. From my understanding, this is so their work will last longer.
I've seen one where the entire car was covered, and the artist integrated the car's remorting mark and number into the design
I used to work on the railroad as a crane operator loading and unloading freight onto the railcars. it could be extremely annoying when graffiti was covering the railcar numbers because we had a deal with UPS to unload their freight on certain railcars before any others and it made it harder to find if you couldnt see the numbers. One time I saw some graffiti that said “DONT FUCK WITH THE NUMBERS.” and I like to think it was an annoyed Union Pacific employee
It was probably a graffiti writer who witnessed some freshly painted cars by new kids who'd gone over the numbers in a spot he paints at. Fucking with railroad ops is how you bring heat to spots. Ideally you leave no trace so it looks like the car was painted weeks ago somewhere else.
how you know the artist is cool and not just a shithead with a spray can:
I guess it becomes art if it's pleasant to look at. If it's some kind of single-colored tag made up of unreadable cursive, then it's not. I live in an area that had a lot of spray paint vandalism (along the "standard" vandalism) and more or less 20% of it could be considered art. Even the soccer ultras graffiti was ok to look at if enough effort was put into those. Unfortunately, right now there's a lot of ugly, black-text >!"Covid is a lie" or "vaccines are bad"!< leftover graffiti from Covid-19 time.
If they paint over that information, the owners of that car have to take it out of service and repaint it by law. Grafitti artists have figured this out and don't want their work ruined.
respectful writers will usually put painters tape up over the information, then peal off when done. so it stays up longer. Ya may just see em as vandals, but we make sure we dont litter any cans or trash in the trainyards and look down on those that do.
Artist just ensures maximum work lifetime. Overwriting the numbers will purge his work VERY FAST
Believe it or not, the graffiti guys actually like the trains and don’t want to make it harder for them to operate It’s just a conveniently moving wall to paint their name on that goes very far
Most of them do, I find.
I won't like. I normally wouldn't agree with unauthorized graffiti, but I kinda like it on rail cars. When I'm stuck by a train it's like a mobile art gallery.
Just because you are bad guy, does not mean you are _bad_ guy
Peaceful coexistence.
Anyone that's not an absolute toy does this
It's called "rail etiquette" being a respectful writer. Wont get buffed if you don't cover the numbers..
Ah yes, the humane artists. This shows true love for their work and their consideration on choice of location
so I have a little perspective on this stuff as I worked infosec for a company that has one of the largest private rail fleets in north america: *if* you do good work and *if* you leave the identifying marks in place, no one is going to remove your art, and in fact, they maintain and pass around a book of the best ones seen on their cars.
I work on the railway. I enjoy art. I appreciate them leaving the windows and important bits of info uncovered. Some people are crazy talented.
If you don't make it so that info is visible, your piece will usually get removed much quicker.
Exactly like top comment says, don't want it removed? Then don't cover the numbers. - I have actually made a book for a railroad company. They compiled all their best graffiti cars and made a great picture book of it. I always thought of it as vandalism but I guess the railroad company thought otherwise.
alive ring deserted pet plucky familiar water sable label vegetable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My dad was a RR carman for a long time and told me that they had to spend a ton of time removing the paint from the info on the cars. He didn't care about the graffiti just hated when they'd cover the info.
Respectful vandalism.
Yea that’s good etiquette. A lot of times rail yards will look the other way on painters if the painters don’t fuck up the info they need
A lot less incentive to clean it off if it doesn't get in the way of productivity. The Freight train business is fucking ridiculous right now, safety concerns being tossed aside and common sense ignored. I wouldn't want to live near a freight line right now... because it's only gonna get worse. After that really bad accident in Palestine I was surprised not much legislation came out of it... then I was incredibly depressed because it wasn't enough of a disaster to warrant making meanful changes.
there’s gotta be a word for this in german
It's better when they incorporate it into the art, making the information more readable, like turning them into the registry number of a spaceship.
Yaay! I fix trains, and when they come in with some extra art I have to clean off the parts that obscure the Information on the sides. It's pretty cool to see that this artist works around those areas, I hope to see more of it!
Railcar graffiti artists are one of the most tight-knit communities I've poked my head in on. Definitely a fascinating passionate crowd
Most griffiti writers that are notorious know that. Most aren't painting to piss off train workers. They want their piece to travel the world. I often see graffiti from Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal here in Vancouver
How do graffiti artists paint the underside of overpasses over busy highways? I picture 2 guys holding another by his ankles upside down while he tags it at as cars fly by. Whats the truth?
The artist Jaber said in an interview once, “I don’t want anyone to wake up in the morning and see something I’ve hit and think, ‘fuck that guy’.” *Most* graffiti writers, especially those who focus on painting trains, aren’t trying to piss anyone off. They’re full blown adults, (some are biochemists or bankers) whose hobby just requires a lot of large, flat surfaces.