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America's railroads: The "poster boy" for graffiti vandalism.

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Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 7:04 PM

Norm48327

Deleted.

 

Did you hand write that deletion Norm????

 

 

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Posted by Norm48327 on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 6:30 PM

Deleted.

Norm


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Posted by YoHo1975 on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 6:02 PM

But again, the taggers have grown smart. They know that leaving the car data visible will cause the work to not be touched. So I don't see how this would have a significant impact. 

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Posted by jimnorton on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 5:54 PM

Moving on.....

Arthur "A.J." Farrar is a another passionate anti graffiti advocate that I have shared discussions with.  He is a professional railroader who, at that time, was with the Filmore and Western Railroad.  I don't think he checks the forum but you might have seen a couple of his letters in Trains and Progressive Railroading magazines regarding the wholesale destruction of the nation's freight car fleet..

In one of our last discussions, A.J. spoke of something some of you might know about.  Apparently, cars with data and reflective stripes not visible (i.e. covered with graffiti) are currently in or will be in violation and must be remedied.  Are we at the point where all cars in interchange service must have reflectrive striping?      

Anyway, A.J. spoke of having an FRA agent assigned to him that he was able to report cars in violation due to graffiti.  He suggested I do the same but I failed to do so.  I have since fallen out of contact with Mr. Farrar but think he might have been on to something.  The reporting of cars in violation might be a catalyst in stepping up efforts to reduce graffiti.    

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 5:28 PM

I'm going to guess it was the one from Wisconsin Central, because I don't believe any of the others ever hand writes anything for any reason ever. 

Yes, the railroad wanted to give the impression that they cared...as they do for most anyone who writes in with a concern. 

But do go ahead and believe that a couple of letters has more meaning than the complete lack of effort put forth since you received them. 

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Posted by BaltACD on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 5:28 PM

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by jimnorton on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 5:23 PM

I can't believe the hair splitting here.  It does not matter who wrote the letter.  What is important here is that the railroad wanted to give the impression that the response was great enough to convey the concern of the CEO.  Whether that be personally or on his behalf.  

I am going to end it here but one of these responses was a hand written note. Wink

Jim Norton

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Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 5:19 PM

Murphy Siding

jimnorton

For the record.......Two of these responses came from the President and Chief Executive Officer.  The NS response actually started with "Wic Moorman has asked that I respond to your concerns.."  So, to say that these are trivial responses to a railfan is not really a fair assessment. 

Someone also doubted the validity because these were letters and not e-mails.   Proper correspondence is still in the form of a letter.  An e-mail might be your style but I harken that to contacting the railroads via the CB radio!

But do realize when a citizen wrote the railroads about a concern it merited a personal letter from the highest in command.  Try getting that with so called "important" concerns about carbon footprints and quiet zone crossings! 

    Sorry to break it to you.  He didn't send you a letter.  It was probably an intern. So, yes, these are trivial responses to a rail fan.  Since you've written that letter, in  your estimation, how much money has NS actually saved by following your lead to rid the world of grafitti?

Poor Jim...  He's gonna be crushed.  He thought he was getting the real deal. Wink

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Posted by BaltACD on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:59 PM

Murphy Siding

jimnorton

For the record.......Two of these responses came from the President and Chief Executive Officer.  The NS response actually started with "Wic Moorman has asked that I respond to your concerns.."  So, to say that these are trivial responses to a railfan is not really a fair assessment. 

Someone also doubted the validity because these were letters and not e-mails.   Proper correspondence is still in the form of a letter.  An e-mail might be your style but I harken that to contacting the railroads via the CB radio!

But do realize when a citizen wrote the railroads about a concern it merited a personal letter from the highest in command.  Try getting that with so called "important" concerns about carbon footprints and quiet zone crossings! 

    Sorry to break it to you.  He didn't send you a letter.  It was probably an intern. So, yes, these are trivial responses to a rail fan.  Since you've written that letter, in  your estimation, how much money has NS actually saved by following your lead to rid the world of grafitti?

What is the current postage on bulk mailings?

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by Euclid on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:33 PM

Murphy Siding

wanswheel

Could state ‘public nuisance’ laws be written to fine railroads for ‘displaying’ graffiti? If the fines were steep enough, it might be an incentive to arrange to keep the cars clean. Or does the court agree such laws impede interstate commerce?

  I dunno.  The same type of laws could be made to fine you for having rust on your car, painting your house an unpopular color, or owning an ugly dog.  I can't picture any lawmaker getting behind that cause.

They will fine you for not removing graffiti that somebody else put on your building. 

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:24 PM

wanswheel

Could state ‘public nuisance’ laws be written to fine railroads for ‘displaying’ graffiti? If the fines were steep enough, it might be an incentive to arrange to keep the cars clean. Or does the court agree such laws impede interstate commerce?

  I dunno.  The same type of laws could be made to fine you for having rust on your car, painting your house an unpopular color, or owning an ugly dog.  I can't picture any lawmaker getting behind that cause.

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:21 PM

jimnorton

For the record.......Two of these responses came from the President and Chief Executive Officer.  The NS response actually started with "Wic Moorman has asked that I respond to your concerns.."  So, to say that these are trivial responses to a railfan is not really a fair assessment. 

Someone also doubted the validity because these were letters and not e-mails.   Proper correspondence is still in the form of a letter.  An e-mail might be your style but I harken that to contacting the railroads via the CB radio!

But do realize when a citizen wrote the railroads about a concern it merited a personal letter from the highest in command.  Try getting that with so called "important" concerns about carbon footprints and quiet zone crossings! 

    Sorry to break it to you.  He didn't send you a letter.  It was probably an intern. So, yes, these are trivial responses to a rail fan.  Since you've written that letter, in  your estimation, how much money has NS actually saved by following your lead to rid the world of grafitti?

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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Posted by PNWRMNM on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:15 PM

Your cure is FAR, FAR, FAR worse than the disease, and victimizes the victim yet again.

Mac

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Posted by dehusman on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:15 PM

YoHo1975

In other words, At best, at absolute best, that was a letter from someone on his Executive assistant staff which he signed.

At various times in my career I have written responses to public inquiries for various superintendents, general managers or general superintendents.  I wrote it, they read and signed it.

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Posted by wanswheel on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:01 PM

Could state ‘public nuisance’ laws be written to fine railroads for ‘displaying’ graffiti? If the fines were steep enough, it might be an incentive to arrange to keep the cars clean. Or does the court agree such laws impede interstate commerce?

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 3:57 PM

The fact that you believe those letters to be in any meaningful way personal says an awful lot.

The CEO and President of a multi-billion dollar railroad does not respond to ANYONE personally on any topic unless it is required to keep revenue flowing. This is not a reflection on the validity of your concerns, rather it is a reflection of a reality of the role the CEO plays. If he actually has the time to give a fig about the concerns of some railfan who may or may not be a Stockholder REGARDLESS OF THE TOPIC, then he should be immediately fired and replaced with someone who is able to suss out what is important for them to be doing with their time.

In other words, At best, at absolute best, that was a letter from someone on his Executive assistant staff which he signed. More likely it was a letter from them that had his signature stamped on it and as likely as not, there is a pre-written form letter for "people complaining about graffiti." that someone pulled out of a printer and put in an envelope for him.

Again, I'm not saying this to minimize your arguments per se, just to disabuse you of the notion that any CEO of any class 1 would ever send out personal correspondence on any topic with a random railfan or typical stockholder.

It simply would not happen.

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Posted by jimnorton on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 3:21 PM

For the record.......Two of these responses came from the President and Chief Executive Officer.  The NS response actually started with "Wic Moorman has asked that I respond to your concerns.."  So, to say that these are trivial responses to a railfan is not really a fair assessment. 

Someone also doubted the validity because these were letters and not e-mails.   Proper correspondence is still in the form of a letter.  An e-mail might be your style but I harken that to contacting the railroads via the CB radio!

But do realize when a citizen wrote the railroads about a concern it merited a personal letter from the highest in command.  Try getting that with so called "important" concerns about carbon footprints and quiet zone crossings! 

Jim Norton

Huntsville, AL

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Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 1:51 PM

Norm48327

"They change the argument to fit the quotes, and then try to discredit the quotes for extra insurance."

Something Bucky has been doing on a regular basis. Confused

 
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Posted by Paul of Covington on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 1:48 PM

   Let's take a look at Ben Franklin's quote below, but let's substitute "believe" for "do" at the end:

   "So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to believe."

_____________ 

  "A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner

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Posted by Norm48327 on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 1:10 PM

"They change the argument to fit the quotes, and then try to discredit the quotes for extra insurance."

Something Bucky has been doing on a regular basis. Confused

Norm


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Posted by tree68 on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 9:58 AM

Bucky - I don't believe anyone has said that graffiti is not an issue.  What has been said (multiple times, in multiple ways) is that in the grand scheme of things, railroads have bigger fish to fry than graffiti.  

If there was a cheap, easy fix, it would have been implemented by now.  As it is, it costs about $2,000 to repaint just the bottom half of a tagged car (the part the most taggers can reach).

In the meantime, I'm sure that the railroads would prefer to avoid a million dollar claim by using their scarce police resources stopping the theft of the contents of a shipping container to catching some punk kid (or older - I found a report of a 41YO man caught in the act) with a spray can.

Kyle
It would take out of their spray can fund.

This assumes that they actually bought and paid for the paint in the first place...

I also found a report in which a railcar repair official stated that the car owners sometimes leave some of the more artistic graffiti in place if it didn't interfere with the reporting marks and other important information on the car...

It's up to car owners to decide whether to paint over graffiti, Masters said. If the graffiti doesn't cover up identification numbers, owners usually leave it alone, especially if it's particularly creative.

Wait!  You mean that the car owners really don't care about graffiti?  How is that possible????  They should be drawn and quartered for allowing this blight to continue to infect the landscape!


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Posted by Murphy Siding on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 8:18 AM

    Just saying that up is down and left is right doesn't make it so.  Jim was kind enough to post some letters, proving that some railroad PR folks are kind enough to give lip service to his concerns.  As pointed out, they also prove that there is more than one way to look at the problem- the for-proft, railroad way, and the railfan who knows everything way.

     Foretunatley, I expect Jim to quantify the increased profits railrads have reaped by heeding his advice way back when.

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Posted by Euclid on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 8:04 AM

Murphy Siding

jimnorton

Now that we have established the railroads are indeed concerned with graffiti, as illustrated in the previous excerpts, those like Murphysiding are spinning the facts and belittling the concerned to say that what was stated is not really what they meant.  After all, Its written to a "railfan" who "pretends to be a stockholder."

 

  Your letters clearly showed that someone at the railroad thought enough to send a concerned letter back to you.  The letters also showed exactly what 10 others on this thread have been telling you-

I don't think so. The letters refute what many have been saying.  There have been a lot of comments about how graffiti is not a significant problem for railroads and car owners.  It is has been said that graffiti does not hurt the bottom line.  Graffiti does not affect the car’s ability to haul a load.  The liability of graffiti makers on the property is not significant.  Graffiti has no negative effect on brand or image.  It costs too much to remove graffiti and there is no payback.  If you remove graffiti, it will just be reapplied.

All of this raises the question about the industry response to graffiti.  The fact that graffiti is rampant suggests that the industry response is insufficient to prevent or significantly reduce graffiti.  Those who have told us that graffiti poses no practical problem have clearly used that premise to justify the industry’s insufficient response to graffiti.  They basically say graffiti is not a problem; the industry does not respond to it; therefore it follows that the industry does not think it is a problem.

So Jim Norton posts several quotes from the industry saying that it does indeed regard graffiti to be a problem.  Then people who had told us graffiti is not a problem suddenly turn around and extract snippets from the quotes to indicate that graffiti costs a lot of money to remove, railroads are fighting hard by arresting graffiti vandals, and that railroads cannot prevent graffiti when the car is on a customer’s property.  So people who held that graffiti is not a problem, are now using the quotes to prove that it is a problem. This is a shift from their original position of graffiti not being a problem.  Suddenly now, graffiti is a problem, and the reason why there is so much graffiti is that it is a hard problem to solve.

And then these same people go on to discredit the quotes from rail execs by saying they are meaningless responses to railfans. They change the argument to fit the quotes, and then try to discredit the quotes for extra insurance.

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 8:02 AM

Kyle

I think that graffiti would go done if the RR police also take a look at sidings every once in awhile,  maybe hit someone with a very harsh punishment and put them on the news.  The presence of the police, and the demonstration of "this happens when you vandalize property" should make some vandals stop and think. 

Just wonder, what does it cost to paint an entire cost? Plus, what is the lost revenue?  Maybe the RRs should make the vandals pay these prices when they are caught.  It would take out of their spray can fund.

  This might be a viable option worth discussing, if you had any concept of how railroads, businesses in general, and the justice system works in our country.  Railroads allocate funds to priorities.  Graffiti is way down the list.  A lot of the sidings are not on railroad property.  They are on someone else's property.  The railroads can't simply "make the vandals pay these prices when they are caught".  There is this thing called laws and courts, and lawyers.

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 7:49 AM

jimnorton

Now that we have established the railroads are indeed concerned with graffiti, as illustrated in the previous excerpts, those like Murphysiding are spinning the facts and belittling the concerned to say that what was stated is not really what they meant.  After all, Its written to a "railfan" who "pretends to be a stockholder."

 

You can surely lead a horse to water......................

More soon.

  Your letters clearly showed that someone at the railroad thought enough to send a concerned letter back to you.  The letters also showed exactly what 10 others on this thread have been telling you- the railroads can't protect the cars on other people's property.

     The fact that you are are posting letters from railroads and not e-mails, suggests that these were written way back- note the Wisconsin Central letter. Since the railroads involved, in your opinion, were so gung ho about fixing the major problem of grafitti, then you should be able to answer this question.  Can you quantify the amount of increased profit the railroads have reaped in, once they took your concerns to heart?

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 7:19 AM

Kyle must think that special agents don't have more pressing issues demanding their time than going out to some remote spur to chase down vandals.  Most railroad police forces are spread pretty thin, making graffiti prevention an understandably low priority.

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Posted by Kyle on Wednesday, August 13, 2014 4:22 AM

I think that graffiti would go done if the RR police also take a look at sidings every once in awhile,  maybe hit someone with a very harsh punishment and put them on the news.  The presence of the police, and the demonstration of "this happens when you vandalize property" should make some vandals stop and think. 

Just wonder, what does it cost to paint an entire cost? Plus, what is the lost revenue?  Maybe the RRs should make the vandals pay these prices when they are caught.  It would take out of their spray can fund.

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Tuesday, August 12, 2014 11:54 PM
And yet, they haven't put their money where their mouth is.
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Posted by jimnorton on Tuesday, August 12, 2014 11:42 PM

Now that we have established the railroads are indeed concerned with graffiti, as illustrated in the previous excerpts, those like Murphysiding are spinning the facts and belittling the concerned to say that what was stated is not really what they meant.  After all, Its written to a "railfan" who "pretends to be a stockholder."

 

You can surely lead a horse to water......................

More soon.

Jim Norton

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Posted by edblysard on Tuesday, August 12, 2014 6:09 PM

Mac,

I am pretty sure someone here has already invented a “super grip” glove and body harness system to prevent just such an occurrence.

And corporate pride/railfan satisfaction is so much more important than safety or profit.

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