When you negotiate with ABC after-school special will you ask them for me how to spell “eleveating”. I hate when I misspell and people quote me.
Patrick: Go to “The Official Eleanor Roosevelt (And Anything Else Non-Topical) thread.” Its a sanctioned non-topical thread. You can discuss your boat there.
Here is the link: http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/172903.aspx?sort=ASC&pi332=61
Going from memory alone… With regard to warning shots, the U.S. is no longer the Old West or the high seas. In common law and in many civil jurisdictions, discharging a weapon is an assault on the person intended to receive the “message.” With many caveats and exceptions, a property owner or agent may use the threat of deadly force to protect property, but not actual force, which includes ‘warning shots.’
In all cases, a shooter is responsible for where his or her bullet goes and must accept the consequences of where it finishes its trajectory.
Even “blanks” or other less lethal “dummy rounds” when used can constitute assault if a reasonable person would have felt their life threatened.
If you need them, I will try to dig out citations on Monday. Legal research is next to impossible from the iPad.
That said, it is unli
Steve,
The thread is going off track and into the realm of gun control. Let’s not got there.
Hi Steve,
It is great to see you here on the weekend! Also, thanks for posting the forum policies at the top.
With all due respect, though, this thread is drifting into gun politics, and really shouldn’t exist at all.
This thread is not drifting to gun control or gun politics. Kyle has pulled it to assault and murder.
Mac
Most railroad special agents and or railroad police are commissioned peace officers, and like almost every cop I know, the very last thing they ever want to do is remove their weapon from its holster, much less discharge it.
Unlike in the movies, once they fired their weapon, they can count on a week of administrative leave and an Internal Affairs investigation, even if the shot was justified.
Railroad cops would most likely face, at a minimum, a rough day answering questions for the DA in whose jurisdiction the event happened, maybe even face a grand jury, which is not pleasant in the least, I can personally vouch for that.
And most cops have no desire to kill someone, ever, under any circumstances.
Tasers, on the other hand……
Lets get back on topic. If you have nothing positive to offer in ways of curbing graffiti vandalism then please don’t derail this thread again. It was initially started to bring awareness to the issue, question why so little is being done to prevent and offer up ideas as a way to discourage it.
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We all know the whys and why nots graffiti exist on freigtht cars.
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We all know that the primary purpose of a freight car is to move freight.
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We all know that railroads are in the business to make money.
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We all know the nation’s rail network is vast and ungaurded
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We all know shooting at people is wrong in most cases.
So, lets get back on topic. I spoke with a group a couple years back which had developed a system for documenting and creating a data base of graffiti. The group offered this service to cities and towns to track graffiti, keep a file of instances for prosecution, identify how prolific a vandal was and then help catch these criminals. It had proved successful with numerous larger cities.
I then asked had they approached the railroads regarding the numerous defacement of their railcars. The answer was “yes…but there was no interest.” There lies the issue and why this thread was started. The railroads are doing nothing meaningful to discourage this. I am outraged that our railroads are covered in graffiti. Lets discuss ways to address this problem.
Another instance where the railroads drop the ball. Surely someone is noticing when one day cars are spotted clean then picked up tagged with graffiti. Its obvious where hot pockets of vandalism are.
Yet, carry a camera trackside and watch them go into action! A friend of mine photographed CSX in rural Kentucky from the roadway. The seasoned railroaders there couldn’t discern him from a terrorist and called the law. Months later, the Office of Homeland Security visited his home here in Huntsville and even contacted NASA where he worked!
Lets see some of that effort go toward those who actually trespass and do damage to the property. Its a joke that photographers are considered the threat. If you want unchallenged and wide open access take along a back pack of spray paint. It obviously rolls out the red carpet!
So far one of the best posts regards a version of Rain-X for windshields as a component of freight car paint. The spray paint would ball and roll off like rain does on a Rain-X treated windshield. Good thinking.
(Yes…we know there is an expense)
There are graffiti resistant paints and coatings available. Not sure of the cost.
How do you paint on the reporting marks and data, all that is spray painted on?
Dehusman asks: “How do you paint on the reporting marks and data, all that is spray painted on?”
Coatings have been used on MM&A’s boxcar #1 which was a modern day State of Maine Products red white and blue scheme as well as on Tropicana’s latest fleet of white boxcars. Nothing has really been reported on the success of each. Tropicana must not be taking advantage of the coating as many of their cars carry graffiti.
I recently contacted Tropicana asking why these original intent of these coating were not being taken advantage of? I received a generic form letter from Pepsico/Tropicana that didn’t even address the question. Apparently, the apathy of the industry has tainted the iconic Juice Train.
A typical boxcar has 14 panels. Of these only 5 are usually used for data. that leaves 9 panels that could be coated to guard against graffiti. That would leave the others uncoated to accept paint or decals for new or reapplied data. But then again, maybe a chemist could offer a barrier that accepts the railroads data while repelling Krylon.
I’d like to back up and address the comments regarding how graffiti abatement can’t be justified as a financial return.
Currently, CSX is painting murals and planting trees in the communities it serves. This requires CSX manpower, CSX purchased materials and the services of a local artist and landscaper. All come with a price yet offer nothing from a financial return standpoint. The public does not look at these murals and freshly planted trees and think CSX. Shouldn’t these resources go toward beautifying CSX first? As a stockholder I see a better financial return on a positive public image through better looking equipment than through trees and murals.
I support corporations. I believe they should make as much money as possible, pay CEOs whatever they desire and hire and fire whoever they please. But at the same time I expect them to be good corporate citizens. Our graffiti covered railroads are not good corporate citizens.
And they can’t get vandals who graffiti their equipment? I would hope they could also find the vandals home and deliver them a check and make them do community service. If they like to paint, then make them paint over graffiti.
I would argue that the folks who would notice would not necessarily be the railroaders. Unless the same crew picks up the car that dropped it off, they probably wouldn’t know whether the car was pristine when spotted. Granted, some local crews probably are the same, day to day.
But I know of one interchange that takes place wherein the shortline crew leaves the cars to be picked up on air - the Class 1 picking the cars up doesn’t have to individually inspect the cars. If they get tagged between the time they are spotted for pickup and the time the Class 1 picks them up, there’s no way to account for it.
Too, some of these taggers are quick - they know their personal trademark and can execute it in minutes. Spend 20 minutes “in the hole” for a meet, and voila! New graffiti! Whole car “art” notwithstanding, most cars are tagged multiple times, the end result being graffiti running the length of the car.
We’ve seen enough accounts of that here to appreciate the irony. The thing is, we’re the low hanging fruit. Taggers generally aren’t standing trackside with a bag full of spray paint, waiting for the railroad to deliver their “canvas.” And we’r
Looked up the Sherwin -Williams Anti Graffiti coating.
It doesn’t “repel” paint, what it does is make it easier to clean off. Taggers can still paint over it and cover it with graffiti. A coated car can still be tageed the same and will look exactly the same as a non-coated car post tagging. It just makes it easier to remove with a high pressure spray washer or hand cleaning with a brush.
For a transit situation where they run their equipment through a washrack on a regular basis it might have an application. For freight cars that never go through a wash rack and are never power washed it doesn’t make a very good case. Sherwin-Williams estimates the cost per sq foot to remove the graffiti without the coating is about $3, while the cost per sq foot with the coating is between $1.50 and $2.25.
A 50 ft boxcar tagged 5 ft high is 250 sq feet, which costs between $375 and $560 to clean one side of one car. If somebody wants to take exception to the estimates, take it up with Sherwin-Williams, they are manufacturer of the coating under discussion and the ones that provided the data, I’m just reporting what they wrote.
Good point. It would appear that graffiti coatings are not cost effective at this point in time. The .99 cent spray paint method (25 cans covering 10 sq ft) would allow the graffiti to be covered for a cost of $24.75 vs. $375.00!
One idea brought forth was a solution through the structure of the car sides. Instead of the ribs (steel channel shapes) turned closed side out these could installed open side out creating a more difficult terrain to paint over. Another idea would be a panel surface other than smooth steel. Imagine a surface with a roof walk welded to it. While this is a stretch, it illustrates the point of having a surface that does not lend itself to easy spray paint application due to the many rectangular voids.
While the boxcar is difficult to protect the enclosed autorack is not. By enlarging the perforations on the side panels a surface can be created that still stops rocks but does not offer enough consistent surface area to accept graffiti. This could be done with new cars with little if any cost of redesigned panels.
But I still don’t get what the point is of all this? This is a lot of money to spend to protect against taggers. I’d rather if the railroads and car leasers have the money for this time sink, that they spend it on say, new tank cars for crude oil service or something else that isn’t just about some foamers in a huff over paint (that’s a pun there, bit of a stretch, but it was intended). There is no cost effective way to clean up the tagging, because every penny spent on it is a penny that might as well be burned in a bon fire. IT is a waste of resources.
How about mounting a few high pressure water cannons to highrailers and have someone go round and spray the graffiti off the cars and vandals if they are seen. Also give them some spray can to jut paint over the graffiti that doesn’t come off. Personally I think and slightly off color patch is better than a tag.