coborn35 Ulrich Railroads need to beef up their security, especially for cars containing hazmat...they are now sitting ducks for any type of terrorist activity. What in the world would possess you to post this?
Ulrich Railroads need to beef up their security, especially for cars containing hazmat...they are now sitting ducks for any type of terrorist activity.
Railroads need to beef up their security, especially for cars containing hazmat...they are now sitting ducks for any type of terrorist activity.
What in the world would possess you to post this?
1) World events. 2) An interest in improving things mostly..
Euclid UlrichAt what point does it become a problem? It becomes a problem if they get injured and successfully sue the railroad company.
UlrichAt what point does it become a problem?
It becomes a problem if they get injured and successfully sue the railroad company.
Does that ever happen?
Ulrich Euclid UlrichAt what point does it become a problem? It becomes a problem if they get injured and successfully sue the railroad company. Does that ever happen?
I don’t know, but it certainly could happen. It is the main reason they don’t want trespassers on their property.
But, (as you are fishing for) the cost of settling such a lawsuit is so much cheaper than fencing in even one or two big sidings, so….besides, most cars are not railroad owned, so why guard against someone tagging something that isn’t ours in the first place, and, if it doesn’t really bother the owner of the car, why should it be an issue for anyone else?
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With all the paint taggers use - do they buy it or steal it? I know what I think.
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A politician!
dakotafred zugmann dakotafredRailroaders also have the advantage of unchallenged access. Not much room in a grip for 56 cans of spray paint, though. Point conceded. Also we don't have the yard clerks, car knockers and other potential culprits from the old days. Does that point the finger at switch crews?
zugmann dakotafredRailroaders also have the advantage of unchallenged access. Not much room in a grip for 56 cans of spray paint, though.
dakotafredRailroaders also have the advantage of unchallenged access.
Not much room in a grip for 56 cans of spray paint, though.
UlrichAnd that's fine... but who pays when the equipment is vandalized on the customers' premises? Nobody.
Right... because the 5th leasing firm to own a car really cares if someone spray paints that rusty old fertilizer hopper that is on its last life.
And I doubt the car owner will take too kindly for a car to be shopped so the graffiti can be removed or painted over. Can't make money that way.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
zugmann Right... because the 5th leasing firm to own a car really cares if someone spray paints that rusty old fertilizer hopper that is on its last life. [snipped - PDN]
- PDN.
Anybody still have a picture of that KCS SD40/SD45 back in the old days with every door, cover or removable part painted a different color? (Backshops humor?)
So to sum up, railroad vandalism cannot be controlled and must therefore be tolerated.Furthermore, any attempt at curbing vandalism is a waste of money and bad for business. Right..
mudchicken Anybody still have a picture of that KCS SD40/SD45 back in the old days with every door, cover or removable part painted a different color? (Backshops humor?)
Of course, your name was not on the ownership..
Ulrich So to sum up, railroad vandalism cannot be controlled and must therefore be tolerated.Furthermore, any attempt at curbing vandalism is a waste of money and bad for business. Right..
I won't lose any sleep over it. Will you?
Ulrich mudchicken Anybody still have a picture of that KCS SD40/SD45 back in the old days with every door, cover or removable part painted a different color? (Backshops humor?) Of course, your name was not on the ownership..
Nor is yours.
I can see the following costs to railroad companies resulting from graffiti:
1) Hauling the extra weight of the graffiti paint.
2) Reapplying car numbers, other markings, and reflectors that have been obliterated by graffiti.
3) Liability for injury or death of taggers while on railroad property.
4) Damage to image or brand.
A lot of tagging gets applied to buildings of businesses, and damage to image and brand is the only damage that graffiti inflicts on them. But that damage is very significant to those businesses, so they fight the battle of removing graffiti because it is cheaper than suffering the damage.
I would imagine that damage to image and brand is quite significant to railroad companies in cases of graffiti applied to locomotives.
At one time, Minneapolis was going to fine property owners if they did not remove tagging within a certain amount of time. I guess the city considers private property to be part of its image and brand. I wonder if they would also consider railcar tagging to be a public eyesore that damages the image of the city.
I don’t know if the tagging cleanup law ever passed, but it revealed an interesting thought process whereby the tagging victim could become a criminal.
Euclid1) Hauling the extra weight of the graffiti paint.
This probably amounts to a few pounds on a car that weighs over 250,000 loaded!
Euclid4) Damage to image or brand.
Seeing as there are lots of locomotives with burned long hoods rusting away after a turbo fire, and fading paint from predecessor railroads, I see this as a non-issue. Most people care more about how quickly the train will clear the crossing than what color the locomotive is.
NorthWest Euclid4) Damage to image or brand. Seeing as there are lots of locomotives with burned long hoods rusting away after a turbo fire, and fading paint from predecessor railroads, I see this as a non-issue. Most people care more about how quickly the train will clear the crossing than what color the locomotive is.
Oh I think it matters. Otherwise locomotives would all be painted in black or gray and railroads would not have logos.
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Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
I would not conclude that railroads tolerate vandalism just because they fail to completely eliminate it. I assume that they arrest taggers all the time.
If your security budget was a given figure, and you had to prioritize, which would be your bigger concern….catching the jerks who pop open a container or two and steal 40 or 50 flat screen TVs, a crate or two of cell phones, or, like we had here, break into a reefer and clear out the entire load of frozen hams, or ignore that and instead chase taggers?
And yes, we do catch taggers, and under Texas law, it is a class c misdemeanor, which means they get ticketed and escorted off property.
Repeat offenders get trespassing charges and jail time.
Euclid I can see the following costs to railroad companies resulting from graffiti: 1) Hauling the extra weight of the graffiti paint. 2) Reapplying car numbers, other markings, and reflectors that have been obliterated by graffiti. 3) Liability for injury or death of taggers while on railroad property. 4) Damage to image or brand. A lot of tagging gets applied to buildings of businesses, and damage to image and brand is the only damage that graffiti inflicts on them. But that damage is very significant to those businesses, so they fight the battle of removing graffiti because it is cheaper than suffering the damage. I would imagine that damage to image and brand is quite significant to railroad companies in cases of graffiti applied to locomotives.
1) The dirt a car picks up on any given trip weighs more.
2) Most taggers paint around the reporting marks and consolidation stencil because they know if they cover those up, the car will be shopped and painted, thus obliterating their “work”
3) Most tagging is done on property other than railroad owned. Most railroad yards are pretty well guarded and patrolled, as are some sidings, but you can’t keep guard on all sidings 24 hours a day, and if the siding is out in the boonies, posting a guard to watch a string of empty covered hoppers sitting on a siding in the middle of nowhere is a waste of resources.
4) Often, if it is a railroad owned car, it will be shopped and repainted when time permits, because railroads do care if their cars are tagged, your “brand protection as it were, but it is not a top priority, keeping the car loaded, moving and earning revenue is.
If it is a privately owned or leased car, that is the owner’s choice, one we can’t make for them
As for comparing a building getting tagged and a railcar getting tagged, did it occur to you a building is a static object, it remains in the same place all the time, and can have cameras mounted on it, and be routinely watcher by the local law enforcement and secured better than a movable object, like a railcar that moves thousands of miles a month, and gets left in some really obscure out of the way places?
If we could get all the railcars together in one really big yard, and never move them again, I bet it would be fairly easy to guard them…of course they wouldn’t earn their owners any revenue, but hey, they wouldn’t get tagged either.
A year or two ago, I saw a video on YouTube of a occupied European passenger train getting tagged at a routine minute thirty second passenger stop by a small group of taggers.
If they can pull that off and video themselves doing it - what kind of security would be needed to prevent tagging of freight cars...
Maybe the best way to approach it is to increase the fines and to control the sale of spray paint somehow or to put a hefty tax on it that is then used to pay for clean up.
Murphy Siding Ulrich So to sum up, railroad vandalism cannot be controlled and must therefore be tolerated.Furthermore, any attempt at curbing vandalism is a waste of money and bad for business. Right.. Or more simply not as big a priority for funds as other items on the railroad, especially when it's on a car that belongs to a shipper-not the railroad. If you were hired to haul a trailer owned by another party with one of your trucks, would you feel compelled to paint over any graffiti on the trailer?
No, but the owner of the trailer would expect compensation. This is especially true of the leasing companies who expect their equipment returned to them in near pristine condition.
UlrichThis is especially true of the leasing companies who expect their equipment returned to them in near pristine condition.
Yeah, heaven forbid you can't make out the Rock Island or Penn Central lettering!
From me. If I return equipment that has been marked up or damaged or vandalized then I get to pay for it. They don't care how it happened... it was under my care and control.
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