Comments on: Amtrak Cascades trainset tagged

By: old timer

old timer — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:36:30 +0000

What can you do?
At a gym,you can see guys have decorated their own bodies as much
and as poorly as these rail cars.
Most of them would think this is de rigueur.

What is it really?
Art?
Stupid boredom?
Certainly too much free time.

The whole permissive and self-indulgent culture deserves exactly what’s coming.

By: poncho

poncho — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:18:48 +0000

that was the case in NYC from the early 70s to mid 80s, but this kind of tagging in the US (save for freight cars) is uncommon in todays world. the key is they clean it asap and dont let the trains run covered in graffiti. check out how nyc successfully fought spray paint graffiti from the system (scratchiti is a whole other story though).

i’m surprised those responsible for the trainset were so clueless as to leave them there. leaving a trainset unwatched in a secluded area is an automatic guarantee that they will be tagged.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:52:39 +0000

When I say a matter of time, I mean years and years, decades even. At a certain point, the tide of taggers becomes so great, that transit agencies, as evidenced in Europe, eventually just give up trying to fight it.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:00:05 +0000

I’ll also point out that as far as I know Sounder equipment hasn’t been tagged.

It is mostly a question of security when the vehicles are parked and cleaning any graffiti off quickly (IOW “clean trains”).

By: Nathan

Nathan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:32:23 +0000

Portland MAX doesn’t look like that, why should Link? The cars are always either running, or inside the operations center, which will be staffed 24/7. So…

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:21:43 +0000

I wonder if they’ll be submitting their work to this website …

http://www.ekosystem.org/tag/train-montpellier/page/8

It’s only a matter of time before Link trains look like this.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:33:26 +0000

Sounds like Amtrak needs to beef up security a bit in their coach yard.

Tagging rail freight cars in a similar fashion to this is all the rage among the taggers. Though they were pretty stupid to think Amtrak would let it run in this condition (and for breaking the windows out).

This is a bit more of a classic NYC style “bomb” than was done to the Link car a while back, so I’ll give the taggers that.

By: Pat

Pat — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:16:15 +0000

I live on Beacon Hill. So far ST and Obayashi have been pretty good about about repainting the Blue Wall within a day or two of any grafitti showing up. Of course, that is while 20-40 construction workers are going in and out of the site all day, so your mileage may vary when its a support pillar ten blocks from a station.

By: Kaleci

Kaleci — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:59:00 +0000

Let’s see, if I recall. Wasn’t someone caned for this in Singapore?

By: Brian Bundridge

Brian Bundridge — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:46:41 +0000

I should have stated that the initial vandalism happened at Holgate Street in Seattle at the Amtrak coach yard. Amtrak just finished new construction of a couple extra tracks and moved the trainset there. It was only a day or so later that the above happened. I want to say that the new windows were installed by CEECo. Unless some of the suspension work was done there.

By: Mike Skehan

Mike Skehan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:15:27 +0000

Sounds like all this happened at Coast Engine. If so, I hope they put the cars back in there paint shop and eat the loss. It took a long time to paint all that with just spray cans — maybe they’ll tighten up on there security.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:56:32 +0000

Sadly a link car already got tagged when it was parked on the elevated track near I-5. But the car was parked there as a promotion. I assume once “normal” operation begins there won’t be any cars parked outside secure areas when they aren’t running.

I’m a little more worried about the Link infrastructure picking up graffiti. Some of those support columns, retaining walls, and station structures have to look pretty tempting to taggers. I hope ST has plenty of money to make any tagging go away quickly. I also hope funding at the local transit agencies never gets so tight they just give up on graffiti removal. Though I’m not sure how likely that is even the parks department and the schools manage to remove tagging pretty quick and neither has the money for a lot of routine maintenance.

By: trickycoolj

trickycoolj — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:20:22 +0000

Looks just like the DB in Germany now.

By: justin

justin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:48:11 +0000

just terrible, I hope link has tight security to prevent this

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:44:31 +0000

Yeah it’s a rotten thing to do.

By: Tim Whittome

Tim Whittome — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:40:56 +0000

I detest the scum that do this – it is neither cool, art, responsible nor appreciated by the rest of us. I guess I answer my own question as to the mentality of these people but these idiots should be locked away for quite some time – it is a big crime in my book.

When will this be refurbished? In the meantime, I trust they will keep this destruction out of site so that other idiots don’t get the same idea.