An idea for the Railroad Industry

[cookiemae]

Hey guys, hopefully there are some high ranked Railroad officials around here to see this thread because I have an idea I think they should consider.

I hate seeing freight trains go buy and then see railcars ingulfed in graffiti. It drives me crazy! Sometimes it can make trains look dirty and I think that makes the rail industry look bad. I think that Railroads should have TRAIN WASHERS. Maybe a place in the yard or somewhere else where a train could come through and just get washed off of all the graffiti and things like that. Locomotives would be nice and shiny like they were in the 50s. This would make trains cleaner and I think more attractive.(not that they arent now)

If I ran a Railroad, I would have some shiny ass trains!

What do you guys think about it?

 

[Kiwi_Rail]

sorry to say but that would be way too expensive...

Rugrat

 

[cookiemae]

The washers wouldnt need to be Diesel powered, hell they could be solar powered. Thats not too expensive.

 

[mjolnir]

The idea of trainwashers is not so farfetched. In the U.S., a couple of the western railroads had and used them for passenger trains years ago. The problem with graffitti, though, is that most of it is paint, which when dry, is not water-soluble, so running freight trains through washers will not remove the tagging. Using a solvent which would remove the tagging, would probably also remove some of the paint of the car, too.

ns

 

[Euphod]

I'm sure it is an expense the car's owners do not wish to take on.

There are alternatives to removing paint with solvents, a high pressure baking soda system seems to be the ticket for this job.

Ed

 

[StorkNest]

I know there's one item of non-US content on DLS that is a wash rack, I believe 2. Names escape me, I know I'm going to botch this one, but it was something like Washalounge.

OK, found it by searching my content folder, KUID:164988:30002 on DLS.

 

[magickmaker]

Many US railroads have washers, but they're not for the cars. They use them instead for the locomotives.

As far as the cars go, very rarely will you find an owner that cares much beyond the structural soundness of the car. As long as it rolls, keeps the load relatively safe, and free of theft...not much else matters.
________
buy property in Pattaya

 

[slave-driver]

Most of the time all they do is to reapply the AAR requiered information on the side of the car. (unit number, weight specs. Things like that) Mask off an area on the graffitie big enough for that info just to make the back round one color then re stencil the info on that.

Bill

 

[Red_Rattler]

I think that Railroads should have TRAIN WASHERS. Maybe a place in the yard or somewhere else where a train could come through and just get washed off of all the graffiti and things like that. Locomotives would be nice and shiny like they were in the 50s.

C/mae, I'm not sure how old you are, but you need more than detergent (or whatever is used) & water to remove graffiti vandalism.

PS: Should we really be talking about this subject, as the more these vandals see talk about this, the more it encourages these scum.

 

[cookiemae]

Yeah, will if I ran a Railroad, my trains would put other RRs to shame. Some of those cars look really bad. You dont see trucks rolling around like that. In the 50s railroads used to take better care of their equipment, cars included. Today, anything goes. There seems to no longer be a sense of pride in ownership of the RRs anymore, as long as it rolls who cares if there are racial slurs, political threats, and in some cases government references. If I went and wrote in red spraypaint " Obama will die if he is elected, dumb n**ger " on the side of an 18 wheeler,(which is the message I saw on the side of a boxcar last week while Railfanning in Cincy, Ohio) I bet it would be on the news in less than 10 minutes after the truck hit the road! Same cant be said if it was a boxcar.
What a shame things have become!

 

[Sabertooth]

The point is.. when the widespread use of spray paint started to occur.. to this day railroad yards are sitting ducks for graffiti artists. No railroad can stop it with out around the clock protection(which in light really isnt neccesary).
Besides, freight cars incounter more then just spray paint, they get dirty, greasy, oily, rusted and banged up from various railroad movements and equipment. Freight cars in the eyes of railroads are not the gleaming ATSF super chiefs. They are a utility made for nothing other then getting the job done.

And as other people have said, theres no cost effective way to remove the graffiti(and lets face it whats the point anyway).

 

[LVman]

why wash Freight cars when they would be attacked again?
just keep the locomotives clean is all i care, well not really. Dirty locomotives give a railroad its taste.
One example of a good RR is the MRL. They wash the SD70M2s after every run.
Cheers,
Sean

 

[Red_Rattler]

to this day railroad yards are sitting ducks for graffiti artists. No railroad can stop it with out around the clock protection(which in light really isnt neccesary).

They are vandals, NOT artists.

Besides, freight cars incounter more then just spray paint, they get dirty, greasy, oily, rusted and banged up from various railroad movements and equipment.

You can't compare the two.

And as other people have said, theres no cost effective way to remove the graffiti

Their are methods that can deter graffiti vandalism - and that is a lot STRONGER discipline, and making the scumbag/scumbag's parents pay the full cost + penalties of various factors.

Dirty locomotives give a railroad its taste.

Wethered okay, but not as extremely as dirty as they are in Australia. Due to the drought a number of locos aren't washed - even on passenger trains such as the Indian Pacific/The Overland - yuk!

 

[cookiemae]

Yeah, like they have been ententionally bathed in weathering! LOL
HAHA! Thats funny! ROFL

 

[Klinger]

its cheaper to just ignore graffiti, and locomotives get dirty anyway, no point keeping them shiny

I remember when the ES44's looked new and clean here in Denver, now their all dirty. it took less then a year too

 

[WileeCoyote]

If you come to Germany you will notice that very few (compared the USA) wagons and locomotives have graffiti, mostly the stuff that gets higher traffic (freight wagons and "big city" passenger wagons) has the stuff removed. But otherwise, if it still does its job, we'll let it run.

Come to think of it, I don't believe I've ever heard of steam locomotives getting graffiti.

WileeCoyote

 

[StorkNest]

I wonder if this also has to do with a lot of modern cars being owned privately? Back when American railroads owned the cars, they had areas and times when the cars would be pulled off for cleaning and care. Do the private owners have that? I could see them saying, "It saves money to not clean that off, if it runs its good." And I have never seen a mention of a private owner as a rail customer.

 

[cookiemae]

I wonder if this also has to do with a lot of modern cars being owned privately? Back when American railroads owned the cars, they had areas and times when the cars would be pulled off for cleaning and care. Do the private owners have that? I could see them saying, "It saves money to not clean that off, if it runs its good." And I have never seen a mention of a private owner as a rail customer.

Yeah thats a good point there.

 

[WileeCoyote]

That is a good question, they probably do though (here at least), a big majority of the wagons running around here are still owned by Deutsche Bahn AG (hence the reason why most of them actually look relatively clean). I've only seen a few private wagons with graffiti on them, so I'd assume they take them off the line once in a while and repaint them.

WileeCoyote

 

[mjolnir]

Yeah, will if I ran a Railroad, my trains would put other RRs to shame. Some of those cars look really bad. You dont see trucks rolling around like that.

It is true that there are few truck trailers and containers which have as much graffiti as some railroad cars do, however, there are some other considerations involved here. First, as a function of the number of hours in a week, highway trailers are more closely watched for much longer than rail cars are, so there is more opportunity for taggers to leave their mark on railcars. Second, trailers and containers have a much shorter working life span than railcars. Typically, railcars have a forty year life span [NB: there are exceptions: derailments can cause a car to be so badly damaged that it is scrapped rather than repaired, and some cars are experiments that are scrapped when the experiment is deemed to have failed]; highway trailers usually last about seven.

ns