I'm not gonna comment.

I'm just submitting this to the "peanut gallery" for discussion.

https://www.facebook.com/BandORailroadM ... 891070589/






Sorry for anyone who has to scroll to see it all, but you DO need to see the detail in this.....

I'm pretty sure the caboose is numbered "410" for the Baltimore telephone area code.
Anyone care to get us the original Chessie number?

Actually, the Electric Railway Museum which used to be next to Coventry Airport here in the UK did something similar about 10 years ago to a 2-car EMU which was part of their collection.

Hasn't been easy finding photos of it, but most pictures appear to be the end with Nikola Tesla and a Virgin Pendolino on it....
https://www.flickr.com/photos/92353660@ ... 713114299/

The other end had Michael Faraday and a LT Tube train...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/camperdow ... 768345513/

The museum closed about 5 years ago and all the stock has been dispersed to other collections now.

The Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum in western Massachusetts has a B&M boxcar which has worn two mural/street art paint schemes by local artists. The museum's website states that they plan to eventually paint the car in its original B&M scheme.

If you ask someone to create pre-planned art on the side of something, that isn't graffiti.
As much as I hate graffiti, this was clearly planned and intentional with full museum cooperation. I like it.

I like it way more than stock csx paint job.

It's eons beyond simplistic "cool disco dan" tagging, or ones that might as well be in klingon.

I have thought about different places with unrestored, rotting / rusted railroad equipment and thought why not let the graffiti people have at it? At least it gets a coat of paint on it and doesn't cost a dime. Although one would need to police something vulgar being placed on it.

And, like it or not, graffiti is a part of the modern railroad landscape.

In the same way that 50s equipment looks weird with COTS stencils, 2020s equipment will similarly look odd in 80 years without tags.

Do the "graffiti people" caulk, or patch roofs, or anything else useful?

I'm so glad you wrote this, as I've never understood the majority of whatever writing these thugs are doing with rattle cans. Who the heck can read that stuff? I've always wanted to ask someone who does this about that as I think only the person spraying it on has any clue what they're trying to communicate and I often wonder if they even realize that.
That is an excellent point.

I came across the Museum's call for vandals to come and add their mark(s) to a selected piece of rolling stock at the Museum in a contest which saw the "winner" get his work featured on the car for future museum goers (and young children) to witness.

Typical Baltimore. Typical of other things not gonna bother detailing here as this is a site about preservation (something the B&O Museum seems to be overlooking).

Anyway - kind of wondering about the next contest at the Railroad Museum:
"How to strip copper wire from a locomotive: Who can cut and strip the great weight?"
"Beat the locomotive at the crossing! Can you do it? Winner gets to live!"

To Ed's point - the above to themes stay within the confines of "Modern Railroading".

Sad, sad, sad - at least the owners of the caboose gave their consent. Maybe the Museum
should've sponsored a contest geared towars actually cosmetically restoring it's equipment - there's a challenge. Or a constructive theme - assuming anyone would participate.

/Mitch

What is the point? Regardless of legitimacy, it symbolizes illegal graffiti. No matter how inspired that imagery is, it always looks horribly disjointed when applied to the side of a freight car. So the only reason for doing that is to exploit the railcar as free rolling promotion of the art. A freight train of cars plastered with spray can graffiti looks like a traveling landfill. Yet it seems like there is a special form of correct doctrine that obligates some people to honor this artistic expression.

.

We have to make it clear, commissioned art is not the same as illegal graffiti even if stylistically there is a similarity. Calling a paid artist a thug or "a call for vandals" just because their art is done in a certain style and uses a rattle can has some really crappy racial undertones that we should put a lid on in this community.

Personally I think the caboose is a bit garish, but if that is what the museum needed to do for community outreach so be it, paint can always be stripped off with a needle gun in the future. A lot more garish things have happened in preservation before, CB&Q 5632's gold paint sure comes to mind. Even more permanent changes such as Strasburg's Thomas come to mind, and we hailed that as a justified thing for community outreach. This caboose is much the same in that vein, and even more easily reversible in the future if the museum ever decides to give it a more historic paint scheme in the future someday.

I don’t think there is any need to clarify that commissioned art is not the same as illegal graffiti.

I genuinely see no problem with this, and i would bet at least 50 cents that 90% of the boomers exploding over this wouldn't bat an eye if it was just a regular unrestored hack.

At the end of the day, this has turned an unassuming hack - which was probably shunted off to a siding with a bunch of other equipment - into something which can be displayed, visited, and have the general public take an interest in it.

Saying this somehow encourages graffiti is an incredibly idiotic comment which disparages the entire medium, and it doesn't take much for one's mind to wonder why specifically you people keep drifting to Baltimore and Urban.