dehusman Euclid How many shipments do you think U.P. would lose if they just ran their equipment in red oxide paint with no name or logos? Since the UP's paint scheme for boxcars IS oxide red with only required lettering and a very small UP shield, and their carloadings are going up, I would have to say that it would make no difference whatsoever.
Euclid How many shipments do you think U.P. would lose if they just ran their equipment in red oxide paint with no name or logos?
How many shipments do you think U.P. would lose if they just ran their equipment in red oxide paint with no name or logos?
Since the UP's paint scheme for boxcars IS oxide red with only required lettering and a very small UP shield, and their carloadings are going up, I would have to say that it would make no difference whatsoever.
They still have a logo, brand, and image. Corporations will vigorously defend their brand against someone else using it or tampering with it because if they allow such, it diminishes their claim on it. Tampering with a corporate brand is like poking a hornet's nest. To me, that is evidence that it matters. So I reject the tortured premise that railcar graffiti only exists because it does not matter to railroad companies.
My point is that graffiti on the outside of a railcar has an effect that matters, even though it does not interfere with the ability of the car to carry a load down the tracks.
EuclidMy point is that graffiti on the outside of a railcar has an effect that matters, even though it does not interfere with the ability of the car to carry a load down the tracks.
Obviously it does or else why bother to paint cars with anything other than rust protection + dimensional and other data? Or why go to the expense of heralds?
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
There is a difference between using a brand (XYZ company representing itself as part of the UP or using the UP logo to create the impression they have a relationship with the UP) and soiling one example of a logo.
Using or infringing on a brand costs business/revenue, directly affects customers and creates actual liability. A tagger does none of those things.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
YoHo1975Have any of you driven past a UP engine facility recently? I road my bike past the Roseville Engine shop this morning. Some of those engines are so paint faded, so beat up and so covered in dirt that they look as gray as the SP units that used to be there. And if Image was so important, why did BNSF let bad paint from GE sit on various Dash-9s. Both Red and Silver and Pumpkin. Fading away to horribleness over decades. For that matter, why hasn't everything been through the paintshop with all the Warbonnets eliminated yet? It's been what? 18 years?
I think that I have heard the figure of $50K to paint an engine when materials and personnel time are all added up. I don't know what the expected life span of the 'normal' paint job is, but I would expect it to at least be the period between major rebuilds - if accident damage does not intervene.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Well, look how long the MILW bandits lasted...
Okay, so if railroads spend money to apply attractive paint jobs and logos on their equipment, then that’s just perfect because it yields real benefit. But if they let paint jobs fade and get burned without timely repair, well then that too is just fine. It doesn’t hurt a thing. And if graffiti vandals deface expensive paint jobs, well gee, that is just perfectly okay too because it doesn’t matter a bit. However the railroads react to any of this is just perfect.
Euclid Okay, so if railroads spend money to apply attractive paint jobs and logos on their equipment, then that’s just perfect because it yields real benefit. But if they let paint jobs fade and get burned without timely repair, well then that too is just fine. It doesn’t hurt a thing. And if graffiti vandals deface expensive paint jobs, well gee, that is just perfectly okay too because it doesn’t matter a bit. However the railroads react to any of this is just perfect.
Metal is painted to protect it from the ravages of Mom Nature; to keep it from rusting and/or corroding. The concept of image and beauty are secondary considerations.
Please describe how much revenue has been lost due to faded engines and graffiti. There seems to be an implication that this is costing someone money. Care to quantify that?
So, what have we discussed
A large percentage of railcars are not owned by the railroads. As long as the data is clear on the car, they do not care about these cars and would not pay to paint even if they did care. If there is a revenue number tied to defacement, then that's not their revenue, it's car owners.
Many cars haven't been repainted in decades anyway. Rust and dead paint schemes are no different if there is some sort revenue lost.
Cars are often tagged when not on railroad property or at remote locations which are not easily policed. And the cost per spur would be high. What's the return on investment.
The OP implied that there would be easy solutions, but almost none of the proposals are based on an understanding of what's going on.
Although graffiti varies, most of it has a sameness that sends a message of nightmarish despair. Graphically, it just reads that way. I can pick up that message as I see it coming a quarter mile away. I have never been a stickler for preferring clean engines and cars with good paint as many railfans and photographers are. With rolling stock in particular, I always liked the drab look of freight trains in the pre-graffiti era.
I have no idea what it costs. The cost may be unquantifiable in accounting terms. That is probably the case with all corporate identity and branding. But it is an interesting question. If they can’t measure the effect of branding, they must just pay for it anyway under the assumption that it yields a profit. It is like advertising. Everybody knows that a part of their advertising cost is wasted money. They just don’t know which part.
I don’t doubt that railroads have looked at the cost of graffiti versus the cost of removing it and decided that the cost of removing it is too high. Maybe what is needed are non-union graffiti expunging sub-contractors. It would be a lean and mean special service company that paints over graffiti on a mass basis.
How many managers who make the decisions on how to ship products ever see the cars? They look at cost, timeliness and reliability when they make their decisions.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
The well cars get their share. In both cases though, those are low dwell time cars that move from secure area to secure area without stopping. The only time a given container might get tagged is when it's on the road and even that seems low risk due to the relatively short hauls involved.
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Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Euclid Maybe what is needed are non-union graffiti expunging sub-contractors. It would be a lean and mean special service company that paints over graffiti on a mass basis.
The taggers will appreciate the fresh canvases.
Even using low paid scabs, who is going to foot the bill? Again, you really think that leasing firm cares about that 50 year old hopper in fertilizer service?
Yeah, the Reading & Northern started its graffiti program, but that railroad is run by a railfan. It also has only a handful of locomotives and small amount of trackage compared to a class 1.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
BaltACDMetal is painted to protect it from the ravages of Mom Nature; to keep it from rusting and/or corroding. The concept of image and beauty are secondary considerations.
Obviously. So why bother with more expensive brightly-colored and/or complicated paint jobs (UP, BNSF) with expensive to purchase and apply fancy logos on freight cars? If all that matters is rust protection, think of all the money saved to benefit management bonuses if they were all painted BCR with white reporting marks, numbers and data?
schlimm Obviously. So why bother with more expensive brightly-colored and/or complicated paint jobs (UP, BNSF) with expensive to purchase and apply fancy logos on freight cars? If all that matters is rust protection, think of all the money saved to benefit management bonuses if they were all painted BCR with white reporting marks, numbers and data?
Beats me. Wouldn't hurt my feelings much.
What "birghtly colored" cars do you refer to?
Last time I checked, the orders for BNSF grain cars was painted iron oxide red...on purpose, because it hides rust, and is a hard color for taggers to cover.
The plastic hopper fleet is grey or gray, you pick, because it refelects heat and hides the plastic dust better.
Most tank cars are black, it also hides overflow spill.
White tankcars are that color for the opposite reason, they show the overflow, (think acid cars).
TBox and RBox cars are that yellow because that is the parent company's color.
My neighbor's son has a old chevy truck, mid 70s, more bondo that metal, started life that green gold metal flake GM used...but its just butt ugly, and he parks it on the street for everyone to see.
He bought a cheap air brush from Ace Hardware, tried to paint a Pegasus mural on the side of the bed, it ended up looking more like a Nutria rat with wings than a horse
So, following your rational, I should run his truck over the Earl Schribe or Maco and pay out of my pocket to get it painted real pretty because of pirde in Chevy Pick Up ownership?
23 17 46 11
Ulrich, you have hit it exactly.
Johnny
There are actually two tiers of damage that graffiti causes:
1) The damage to the brand caused by obliteration of its graphics.
2) The damage to the brand caused by the graffiti graphic symbolism.
edblysard [snipped - PDN] . . . He bought a cheap air brush from Ace Hardware, tried to paint a Pegasus mural on the side of the bed, it ended up looking more like a Nutria rat with wings than a horse . . .
With the AEI / RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) devices on-board all the cars these days - see "AEI Data Tags and Readers" here, at: http://trn.trains.com/en/Railroad%20Reference/ABCs%20of%20Railroading/2006/05/AEI%20data%20tags%20and%20readers.aspx - who even needs the low-tech painted reporting marks anymore ?
Someone ought to (if not done already) 'cross-link' to here the recent thread on and the news blurb about the overweight 'tagger' who got caught while running away, for the sake of completeness.
OK, here it is - thanks to BaltACD, who posted it on page 3 of this thread here - "Uninvited, non-revenue passengers on freight trains" - on 07-17-2015 at 09:46 AM:
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/230951.aspx?sort=ASC&pi332=3
BaltACD Euclid BaltACDWith the terrorists threats in today's world you can't take any trespasser for granted. I have heard that terrorists are posing as graffiti artists, so nobody will suspect them. Graffiti-painting suspect nabbed Online Athens (Online) (GA) July 14, 2014Athens-Clarke police charged a Forsyth County man with illegally painting a CSX train Sunday, while a second man was able to elude capture, according to a police report. A passing motorist spotted the men about 11:30 a.m. spray-painting a parked train on the tracks near Jefferson Road at Homewood Drive, police said. When the officer arrived and called out to the two men, they began running down the tracks. The pursuing officer noticed that one of the men, described in the police report as overweight, slowed down as if worn out and veered into the woods, while the slender man kept running down the tracks, according to the report. As additional officers arrived, they saw the heavier suspect run across the Athens Perimeter, then slide down an embankment where an officer was waiting. The suspect, Erik Eliel Martinez, 26, of Cumming, begged police to let him call his mother. Martinez, who explained that he paints trains, complained that he "knew he should have stayed at home," according to the police report. He was charged with obstruction and damage to property.
Euclid BaltACDWith the terrorists threats in today's world you can't take any trespasser for granted. I have heard that terrorists are posing as graffiti artists, so nobody will suspect them.
BaltACDWith the terrorists threats in today's world you can't take any trespasser for granted.
Graffiti-painting suspect nabbed Online Athens (Online) (GA) July 14, 2014Athens-Clarke police charged a Forsyth County man with illegally painting a CSX train Sunday, while a second man was able to elude capture, according to a police report. A passing motorist spotted the men about 11:30 a.m. spray-painting a parked train on the tracks near Jefferson Road at Homewood Drive, police said. When the officer arrived and called out to the two men, they began running down the tracks. The pursuing officer noticed that one of the men, described in the police report as overweight, slowed down as if worn out and veered into the woods, while the slender man kept running down the tracks, according to the report. As additional officers arrived, they saw the heavier suspect run across the Athens Perimeter, then slide down an embankment where an officer was waiting. The suspect, Erik Eliel Martinez, 26, of Cumming, begged police to let him call his mother. Martinez, who explained that he paints trains, complained that he "knew he should have stayed at home," according to the police report. He was charged with obstruction and damage to property.
- Paul North.
The mind of the tagger:
http://www.northbankfred.com/canada.html
edblysardWhat "birghtly colored" cars do you refer to?
Ever heard of little line called the Union Pacific? The old Railbox fleet? Yellow paint with covering power is more expensive than a basic rust protector. But those are the parent company's colors, you say? You just made my point. The reason is beyond simple pragmatics.
schlimm edblysardWhat "birghtly colored" cars do you refer to? Ever heard of little line called the Union Pacific? The old Railbox fleet? Yellow paint with covering power is more expensive than a basic rust protector. But those are the parent company's colors, you say? You just made my point. The reason is beyond simple pragmatics.
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