My grandfather had a house purchased from Sears and delivered as a kit in a single box car to the LIRR station in Oyster Bay NY.
Overmod. . . you could watch the whole of Koyaanisqatsi on demand right there for free!
- PDN.
EuclidEuclid wrote the following post an hour ago: In the example of the kit home, it appears to be a new idea of marketing the kit home, but maybe not a new idea of railroad marketing. It may have just been standard rail service back then.
I think the point was just to show how easily all the stuff would fit into just one carload; there wouldn't have been any practical alternative to a railroad car in that era.
It does have to be said that the drawing is a bit naive on how all that stuff got so neatly arranged inside the car as pictured... or how easily it could be extracted from where the car would be spotted. Whether that is 'forgivable' enough is an issue for debate in the 'semantics of advertising' -- my own opinion is that the ad is just showing how the tight modular packaging has been thought out, not necessarily that you send one boxcar and it will arrive ready for quick unpacking FOB Valeria or wherever E.E.Smith intends to put his house up.
It might be nice to see railroads selling space on their cars, but the need to keep graffiti controlled, alone, would disinterest most 'current' management from trying. This would be like that wrap-car advertising scam being foisted on millennials -- 'earn an income free by using your car for GEICO or whatever promotion', where the fine print says your car has to be late-model without dents, that your driving record is good, that you live in a good neighborhood with an acceptable job and adequate evidence of positive bank balance and no debts, etc.etc.etc. just so you can have your vehicle dressed up as a clown car and then kept clean and untattered at your own sole expense. Railroads can't assure this, and they won't pay someone else to do it, and anyone who 'would' will start cutting corners as soon as the windfall-level easy net revenue doesn't start piling in.
Any such business would have to be built, and probably only in coordination with other aspects of coherent campaigns. Again, something at which I think nearly every modern class I railroad sucks. Therefore the tacit dependence on some organization that Pullman-like would outsource the service-critical stuff in return for minimized payment for the 'opportunity' and limits on downside risk and operating cost.
I do confess the dancing billboards are dystopian sarcasm. Although I can easily build and program them if "desired".
The house I grew up in was from a Sears Roebuck catalogue, shipped by rail.
In the example of the kit home, it appears to be a new idea of marketing the kit home, but maybe not a new idea of railroad marketing. It may have just been standard rail service back then. Nevertheless, it does raise the question of why railroads cannot do effective marketing. Rarely can business succeed without effective marketing. Does railroad management know that anymore? If they do understand marketing, they must feel that it can do no good in the railroad industry.
Using railcar sides as billboards for marketing would seem to be an entirely different concept than the railroads using their own marketing to improve business.
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of "shoe soles on pavement" type marketing, Where someone might devise a clever scheme and actually go out a do grass roots promotion, but that's probably expecting more effort than the railroads are willing to invest?
As far as live action billboards are involved, I recall out in California there was some push back from auto insurance lobbyists, because it was felt that compelling use of such media too close to the roadway might cause distraction.
I suppose it would only bee a short skip until people broadsiding trains at grade crossings would claim they had been mesmerized by the video stream running on the side of the boxcar.
Convicted OneOne of the companies competing in that market prepared the following illustration to demonstrate that all the necessary items to build one home could fit into a (then) standard boxcar.
A modern equivalent is the later Buckminster Fuller study on buildings that folded up into 'ISO container' format (and presumable full intermodal handling and transport facility, although I don't remember concerns like sideloading or twistlock castings being specifically mentioned, and of course this was before the era of proven stack-train operation and economics). The very specific applicability of this to both private and FEMA disaster relief has come to mind several times in the years since I read about the idea.
I remain unsure why someone, somewhere, has not built up the organization and the relationships to provide both billboard and 'sponsor'-type smaller advertising on railroad cars. In the years since deregulation, and especially with the Federal government now limiting its scope to 'safety', it seems that the opportunity has only increased; when you consider that graffiti amelioration becomes part of what advertising promoters might actively provide, the potential becomes even sweeter...
The problem, of course, is that any advertising on the usual sorts of loose car that see 'tagging' would come in for its own special 'attention', quite possibly involving spider-egg-style underhanded campaigns by, or for the benefit of, competitors. Combine this with the fun of safe assured access to put up and maintain all the ads in the current 'railroad environments' where work would have to be done, and I think you have the answer as far as most 'professional advertising firms' would be concerned.
That's a shame, because we know that light and motion are 'better' safety devices, so the usual laws against showing 'movie' video where drivers can see it might not apply. I leave it to the Ridley Scotts of this world to imagine the fun experience of being 'entertained' by progressive boxcar or hopper sides as you wait at a grade crossing -- possibly tailored to someone's version of buying preferences related to your phone's ratting your location out. Think of the fun of being able to read your dancing-graphics and animated-emoji e-mail or catching up on your BFFs' latest 5 minute LOLfest right out the window of your personal electric rental pod or whatever ttrraaffiicc will have succeeded in touting by that time! Heck, in the last few years of groaning PSR operation the trains will be so long and slow that you could watch the whole of Koyaanisqatsi on demand right there for free!
I found the following picture, which I thought some of you might find interesting. In the first half of the 20th century, "kit homes" were a popular idea for the do-it-yourself'er.
One of the companies competing in that market prepared the following illustration to demonstrate that all the necessary items to build one home could fit into a (then) standard boxcar.
I'm speculating, but my guess their intent was to expand the range of their market, from regional, to national. Once it's on a box car, it can go anywhere, not just across the basin.
Since creative minds were once able to use railroads to market their idea, what is to prevent railroads from using ideas to promote their services. As we dwell on all this "spilled milk" we read about declining volume, isn't it about time the railroads re-engage their marketing minds and use ideas to promote railroading? Or are they just going to sit around bickering that "the only business we've lost is customers unwilling to pay a fair price"?
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