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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
Graffiti is really not a railroad problem, rather its a society problem. Decades ago people by and large had respect for the property of others, be it railroad rolling stock, bridges, churches, overpasses etc… Only a shift in values will bring such widespread pervasive vandalism to an end. Today anything goes… crime is considered art. Hopefully things turn around before our homes and personal vehicles become fair game for these vandals.
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:
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.