After searching around for a while, I haven’t found much on hobo and railworker chalk art (AKA: monikers, tags, streaks, etc). You know, the little drawings a la Bozo Texino, Colossus of Roads, Smokin’ Joe, The Rambler, Easy Honey, VG Drums, and the late great Herby.
I’m looking for any info anyone may have on this phenomena or anything remotely related… like how much you love/hate it, or having to deal with it on the job even.
Given the general hostility toward aerosol graffiti, I’m curious as to what everyone thinks about this ‘lesser’ form of marking cars up…
The paint used by taggers is permanent. Painting a car costs money - about $12,000 a pop, so such actions as tagging with paint is intentional destruction of property or a property’s value by vandalism. Since RR’s usually don’t have paint shops any more, these cars usually have to go to a car building or commercial car repair shop. So you have the actual cost of painting as well as the loss of capitol caused by the car waiting in the repair cue.
Chalk art is much less visable and washes off. It seldom was offensive and did not cover up things needed to do your job - like car numbers, COTS stencils, etc.
Those chalk markings were interesting to read, and generally harmless. I was surprised to learn that about a half-dozen or more of those distinctive “tags” originated with Proviso employees, most of whom I knew (but I had no idea they were doing that). A lot of those guys took buyouts; most of the rest aren’t making their marks any more. Don’t know why, except that without too many outside clerks the chalk may be harder to come by, or maybe the graffiti of the spray-can variety has just discouraged them.
I guess it’s time to come clean. About 30 years ago,another fan magazine on railroads,(which is now defunct) ran an article on the chalk grafitti,such as Bozo Texino,The Rambler,etc.A few friends and I decided to get in on the act .Chalk only! We each had our own slogan,mine was Bring Back the Lark.
This went on for several months until one friend and I were caught one night near the Alhambra station.It didn’t help that this particular SP officer had a personal vendeta against my friend[:(].We were both put up as guests for the night at the Alhambra Graybar Hilton[:(!].We were released the next morning and were told when to see the judge. We were both given a stern lecture,then released.This was the end of our careers as boxcar artists[xx(]!
I definitely agree with you on the permanence of spraypaint (even if it comes off, there’s still a ‘ghosting’ effect), but how about the oil-based paintsticks or lumber crayons? I know brands like Markal have some pretty heavy duty marking crayons…
Also, anyone have a link or info on the artice espeefoamer mentioned?
The Rambler, and Big A are still around…
See Big A quite a lot, he is in Pasadena, Tx…
And the Rambler, so far, Louisiana, Alabama, and some from New Mexico…
Yeah they had plenty of typos, but they switched from a newsprint/slick paper mix to all slick several years ago. It can back for awhile but closed again in the 90s.
Speaking of competitors and ‘other graffiti’, R&R magazine once had one that said ‘Jim Boyd uses Fotomat’ [:D]
My roomates and I bought a plaque about a year ago for our apartment of Hobo chalkings from the 1930s. This coupled with the experience one of my roomates had in doing underground chalking to map wireless internet locations (this was called “Warchalking” and was somewhat popular before the neon “On” wifi signs came out as a method of marking where a public wireless network was) gave us the idea that we should start chalking the rails and equipment around Milwaukee.
So we started chalking (with standard white chalkboard chalk) “Beer City Line” on equipment around town. The “tag” is a throwback to the old line that used to go along the East Side in Milwaukee which is where we live and our university is. We’ve also started sending eachother and our friends messages in hobo chalkings around our ward.
Nobody seems to care about the chalkings on public locations (streets, curbs ect.) and we’ve been caught a couple times chalking trains. The rule with that is that you want to get caught by the older hands as they usually just smile and tell you a story about Herby. The younger guys don’t seem to get it, but they usually just tell us to get lost.
I don’t really see it as property destruction as the chalk washes right off and leaves no lasting effects. To my roomates and I we see it as just a tip of the hat to the rails and times of the past, (kinda like speakeasy nigth at the East Sider Pub.)
I was watching my rail fan videos & a thought came to mind that it would be terrific for the taggers to put on the car where it was & the date. Like LAX 03/05. Then we could a idea where the car was over its lifetime.