Death to taggers

But only upon the third conviction. After all, I am not a vindictive man. On the first conviction, those who spray paint on railroad equipment would only have their first two fingers of each hand amputated, making it more difficult to press the button on spray cans. Can we all agree on that? Thank you! On the second conviction, if they prove so resourceful, off go their hands, somewhere north of the wrists. Then, the ultimate punishment. Fair’s fair. They’ve screwed with us; we’ll screw with them. As for the method of capital punishment, well, I am broad minded. I would prefer a firing squad that can’t shoot straight and takes several tries to get the job done. But I am open to compromise.

Hello? Why are you jostling me? Get away! Oh, sorry. Guess I was asleep. But yes, my dream. Amputation, death? Well, no. But folks, we have a problem, and nobody is offering solutions. It was brought home to me yesterday, watching a 90-car train of refrigerated vegetables from the west coast accelerate east out of Buffalo, N.Y., as CSX train Q090 but with Union Pacific locomotives. Within a day or two its contents will be on the shelves of grocery stores from Boston to Philadelphia. What got my attention is that every single one of those 90 once-pristine white Union Pacific cars is marred, probably forever, by hideous tagging. The bottom one-fourth of every single car was a ménage of riotous colors, which translate to ugly. Ugly means nobody cares. Ugly means railroads invite this defacement. Ugly makes me mad.

But the cars in this service are not running willy-nilly across the U.S. They are in dedicated service between California’s Central Valley or Washington and South Schenectady, N.Y. These cars sit still only at the end points, and yet every single one of the 90 cars that went past me outside of Buffalo was tagged.

It’s the same with another CSX train pair, the Tropicana orange juice trains, between Bradenton, Fla., and northern New Jersey. At each end the equipment is supposedly secure, and the trains never stop long en route, either way. Yet they are just as defaced as the veggie trains. To Tropicana's credit, it does make an effort to clean up its cars, but the task seems never ending. 

This is not a CSX problem. This is a railroad problem. Railroads are letting low-lifes violate U.S. laws (and biblical prohibitions against coveting what is not yours) and doing nothing. It’s as if they had signs outside their yards reading, “No Trespassing. Taggers Please Have a Nice Day and Report Unsafe Conditions.”

Where is the outrage? — Fred W. Frailey