Graffiti

Modeling graffiti and condoning graffiti are two different things.  Since graffiti is part of prototype, modeling it is part of replicating the prototype, the same as modeling urban blight, culm banks, deforested forests and general pollution.

On th other hand, I can still object to it and can consider the perpetrators criminals and vandals, who should be caught and prosecuted.

Well said, Joe!

Joe, you have expressed my own opinions in your column regarding graffiti. While some graffiti may display talent in its application, at large it's a blight on society and a criminal activity. 

I am grateful that I model narrow gauge in the 1940s, where the closest thing to graffiti was chalk drawings like 'Kilroy Was Here'. I know the loss of the caboose on trains was a huge influence on my decision to roll back my modeling era years ago, and Joe helped me realize that the emergence of graffiti was also an influence on my decision.

This is not intended to denigrate the fine modelers whose work so accurately reflects prototypes that have graffiti. I have great respect for their talent. It's just not what I love about the hobby or the prototype, and is not something I have any interest in doing.

freight car grafitti

Joe,

Thanks for the excellent commentary on this topic. You have summed up my feelings about the subject quite nicely.

"Ruining the view

"ruining the view with a masterpiece"

    To me they are enhancing the view, they add colorful endless variety to the same few prototype paint schemes remaining after the mega mergers. I'd rather see a hundred different cars in a train than a hundred bland UP paint jobs. I also know that graffiti didn't become prevalent till the railroads started laying off employees so in a way it's poetic justice :> )  ........DaveB

Swimsuit Issue

Yes, the painting can be delightful, but it interferes with observing the important subject. Just like the Sports Illustrated pictures where swimsuits have been painted onto the models. The view without the paint has its own special attractions.

DrJolS

Grafitti

One minor reason that I don't model modern is that I despise grafitti.  I did contemplate a scene with some grafitti vandals being bundled into a police car--then revised the thought, to having them swinging from an overpass.  When I revised the thoughts to include a guillotine, I decided that modelling the 1920's had yet another apeal--none of this vandalism.  (Thought I may yet see if the club would like a scene with grafitti vandals being stuffed into police cars...

Modern or retro

Your choice. You can avoid grafitti by modeling pre grafitti eras. If you are running post 2000 era rolling stock and eliminating grafitti you are modeling a Mayberry world....it doesn't exist......but we all model a fantasy so it really doesn't matter in the overall scheme of things.

 I'm with daveB. When it comes to railroads I think grafitti adds visual interest to what would be a fairly boring pallet without it.

"It is what it is....."

In my opinion, there are so many things in todays society that desire to be curtailed. I view graffiti as just an "it is what it is" scenario. I feel this way when rail companies are doing next to nothing to protect their equipment and furthermore, are now raising the height of reporting marks to more or less, accommodate (not promote) the so called graffiti "vandals".

I have been in this discussion so many times and have absorbed so many viable opinions from both sides of the fence. I was fortunate enough to experience the early years of pre graffiti railroading. I can easily recollect the times when perhaps in a long manifest of mixed freight pounding up the SP Donner sub, a train might contain merely four or five chalk drawings throughout,  i.e. "Herbies", "Ramblers", "Bozo Texino's" etc. (in which I've recently learned some have been and are still being applied as "graffiti" to rolling stock by railroad employees themselves)...What's up with that? How is the chalk scribblings any more excused than full blown graffiti pieces that are emblazoned from one end of a car to the other? All subjective I presume? I have stated before that I do not condone graffiti, nor do I dismiss it. I do get a bit overwhelmed with it and I can concur with Joe's comments on the matter, when it shows up blasted all over vintage cars (fallen flags) with heralds and paint schemes that are but left to the archives of time. As Dave B. states, I also agree,...nothing more of a "snooze fest" than watching a "Big Four" merger railroad with modern G.E. power in sets of 2 and a trailing DPU shoving nothing but a colorless string of unit grain cars minus the colorful paint of graffiti artists (vandals)....boring! These situations are where I find some of the more elaborate graffiti pleasant to view. There are some ridiculously talented artists out there across our nation that express themselves through aerosol on freight cars and I too have pondered the question, "why don't they explore a more permanent avenue of expressing their artistic endeavors on a more permanent canvas."? That question consistently baffles me...not to mention the consumption of time it takes to throw up these "masterpieces"? 

I'll reiterate that I feel that graffiti "is what it is" in contemporary society. I don't endorse it and I don't disregard it. I respect Joe's views here and that of others. Personally, I appreciate the challenge of replicating graffiti in 1/87 scale by painting it freehand on a few of my model projects. This is merely a personal arena of challenge through the nature of the beast. I like to paint it on some of ,my works and I like to keep it devoid from the majority of my works.

I always enjoy this subject nonetheless. Nice Reverse Running topic Mr. Fugate!

Gary Christensen

...

I for one not only despise graffiti, but I also despise the people who make it, the people who defend it, the people who claim there's nothing that can be done against it to stop it, the people who refuse to do anything to  eliminate it and the spineless people who refuse to make a stand one way or another.  Graffiti is property damage, vandalism plain and simple, and it does not happen in a vacuum.

The only reason that Mayberry world does not exist is because good people stand by and refuse to make it the status quo.  It's that simple.  I grew up in an area where it had might as well be Mayberry, and I know a lot of small towns where it still is.  I come from a city where our Graffiti abatement program strongly reflects our community values - we are proactive towards erasing it out.

There are a lot of ugly things we could model in the old eras.  And we could stand by and say we "Have" to model those details in order to be "Accurate."  I can also tell you that not everywhere even then had that blight, hence, even then there were areas where these ugly issues were not relevant.

I model the world I'd rather see, regardless of era.  Mayberry happens when people believe in it.

Art or Vandalism?

Vandalism:

Vandalism:

Art:

(In the eye of the beholder.)

Gene W

For those who have a moral issue...

For those who have a moral issue with simulated graffiti on models, consider this:

Mining and burning coal is far more harmful to humans and other living things on this planet than tagging, yet I have never heard from anyone who had an issue with someone modeling coal railroads and infrastructure.

Taking this a step further, thousands of films and TV shows have portrayed murders.  Does that mean that the directors advocated murdering people?

Remember, as modelers we are just story-tellers.

Gene W

You hit the nail on the head. I grew up during the graffiti explosion, and I can not picture a train without at least a car or two tagged. I have 2 layouts, one 1952, and one 1985. Both have about 20 cars at this time, and only one has graffiti. I can see adding a few chalk marked cars to the early layout and another tagged car to the more modern one, since that was reality. GaryChristensen correctly pointed this out. 

I prefer not to look at the world/past with rose colored glasses. Even in 1961, Mayberry was fiction. Lynchings and segregation was common (not just for blacks) and you could not breathe the air in Los Angeles. 

Prototype modeling

Similar to Gary, I do not condone graffiti in any form but realize that it is a part of modern railroading, like it or not.  My chosen modeling time frame is 2012-2014, and in most cases I follow strict prototypes for my projects.  Some have graffiti, some don't.  If they have it, I replicate it to the best of my ability.  If they don't I leave it off.  That is my own modeling philosophy.  I get enjoyment out of following my chosen prototype as closely as I can whether or not it has graffiti on it.  

-Kevin

I find myself conflicted

 I was against graffitti in it's entirety.  Then I saw an example of 1 that I actually thought was artistic.  I first saw it on this forum, and was fortunate enough to see the car in real life, before the car was repainted.  I speak of the "Hand of God" car.  To me, that car was an exception.  Intrestingly enough, the "artist" took the time to preserve the reporting marks.

Maybe there is room for the railroads to commission some cars of artwork?

Views

I can think of all kinds of things that ruin our views.  

• Ill-maintained buildings.
• Junk piles.
• Trash.
• Scars on the land from roads, rail lines, and quarries.
• Mine tailings.
• Tree stumps and detritus from logging.
• Diesel fuel spills around service tracks.

So let's see...

At the right of this scene are some gray trees, Russian olives.  They were introduced in the west for erosion control, but have nativized and become a menace.  They crowd out native vegetation, are allergenic to some people, and reproduce readily in towns and fields where many people prefer they didn't.  Fuel spilled from gas pumps poses a toxic hazard around the convenience mart.  The townspeople and local farms take irrigation water from the streams, reducing natural stream flows, harming fish populations, and reducing inflows to the Great Salt Lake, contributing to degradation of nearby marshes that are important to migratory birds.  Fertilizer laden runoff from irrigated fields further harms the riparian ecosystem downstream.

This structure has a busted-up fence and a bunch of crap piled around it that the owner should probably have hauled off for proper disposal.

This train is passing a limestone quarry where a cement plant is making a mess out of the landscape.

The railroad has cut, filled, and tunneled its way through the land here, disturbing the natural contours.  Ballast is slag from a copper smelter, laced with toxic chemicals that deter weeds but also leach into the soil and poison it.  As diesel locomotives climb this hill, thrown lubrication accumulates on the ballast and ties, adding still more contamination.

Whether we realize it or not, we model all kinds of things that represent less than positive impact on the world, usually without giving them a second thought.  It doesn't mean we're taking a moral stand on them, but the world is what it is.  I think our community gets hypocritical at times by seeing nothing wrong with a derelict or abandoned structure surrounded by garbage, but arguing that modeling graffiti means we're participating in the downfall of society.

Since when

Since when does not caring to represent a criminal activity in our miniature worlds become a referendum on every negative aspect of human nature and the world we live in? I think those who want to make this an argument are a bit off base.

Model graffiti or don't model it, no harm and no foul. But please don't put words in my mouth...nobody suggested modeling a freight car that has graffiti means 'participating in the downfall of society'. Has someone actually stated that? I suggest this is taking some comments expressed here to the extreme.

Graffiti is different from mining or piles of garbage...while laws may govern them, they aren't inherently illegal. Last I checked, defacing someone else's property - whether in an artistic manner or not - is illegal. Graffiti is also 'in your face' in a way that makes it hard to ignore, unlike the bordello at the edge of town or the still where old timers make moonshine during Prohibition. Graffiti is just something some of us choose to avoid or ignore, because it's indicative of greater social problems than misdirected spray paint.

I think this choice is more a visual distinction than a moral one, in the end. I am modeling a branch line that ultimately contributed to uranium mining, which looks pretty much like any other mining operation in model form. Unfortunately during the period I model, this mining was done prior to environmental checks that would protect both miners and the environment. Significant injury and environmental damage resulted, taking decades to remedy (where possible). The product of this mining contributed to the material used in the two nuclear weapons used against humans. Does that make my layout evil? Or were these miners and railroad workers just doing their jobs and trying to support their families during hard times?

There are two sides to every story, but in the end, let me suggest these are model trains and this is essentially a hobby many of us enjoy to relieve stress, not add to it.

PS: I found Gary C's response very reasonable and right on the mark representing the 'pros' of modeling graffiti...and I hope to see more of his work (and others') on these pages. Not choosing to model something doesn't mean I dismiss the skill of those who do. I hope this can continue as a positive discussion of different points of view, without devolving into an argument about 'who's right'.

We all make our choices

Mixed Feelings

I have mixed feelings about graffiti, most of it is junk, like the tags painted on the bottom of cars, but some of it looks OK. I am always amazed when I see an entire car with a painting on it, the time and effort that goes into it, not to mention the expense of all that paint! Sometimes I think it saves the railways money since the car is covered in paint instead of rust, given that they seldom, if ever, repaint cars these days.

Modelling graffiti adds a realistic element, but I am glad that I model the 1920's when manpower was cheap, so the railways kept cars in good shape.

Can we learn from this....?

What would we do to the "vandals" that left this "graffiti" on these beautiful undisturbed boulders? Would we seek prosecution or learn about a people and their legacy through this blatant disregard for property? When is it or is it not considered vandalism?...Can we not learn about entire cultures from this type of "graffiti"? I think society would perhaps agree upon the latter...

Gary Christensen

Adding to JoeF's post...

Up until (and after) World War II, the swastika was all over Arizona, even on state highway signs....

Actually, I DO model a fantasy world, thankyouverymuch....

Actually, I DO model a fantasy world, thankyouverymuch, in which the railroads didn't crash after WWII, the superhighway network and over the road trucks didn't replace rail traffic, passenger trains run on their own dedicated and limited access high speed tracks, railroads take pride in their equipment and keep it clean, painted and well maintained, and graffiti doesn't exist. (And this is all put down in a history I wrote almost 20 years ago when the BARR was first created in my mind...)

Freelancing has some VERY distinct advantages. My world, my rules.

...

Yes, Gary, we can.  In that era, that was their canvas, and that wall belonged to those people and they decided this was how they would use it.

Today, we have decided we will not use that wall as a canvas, by public consensus, and we have further decided that the individual may not put their art at will upon the property of others.  Regardless of whether you may feel there's a better use for someone else's property or not, it is THEIR property and you DO NOT have a right to go forward and do whatever you want.

Quit trying to legitimize vandalism and the destruction of public and private property alike...

So personal

The ReversRunning column is often incendiary, and this topic will certainly get the conversation rolling.

I think we all agree, Vandalism is Vandalism, but let's not condemn anyone because they choose to model the reality of graffiti. Sure, despise graffiti, but let's not despise our fellow modelers for their choices.

Nobody here needs to justify their decision to model this.

Some choose to model graffiti, Some do not. Let's stick to telling our own stories of what we do and why.
Let's please not judge others or tell them what to think.

My models include graffiti. It's part of representing the world I model. But I do not condone the activity of vandalism. You won't find me painting other peoples boxcars unless they ask me to, and it certainly will not be with stolen paint

Cheers!

Whoa Verne

Since at least some of this response, perhaps all of it, seems directed at my post above, please note that I wasn't in the slightest even thinking of your earlier post when writing it.  If you took offense at what I wrote, I would hope you reconsider.

Just in case some further clarification is in order, whether or not anyone in this thread has attached the particular criticism that modeling graffiti is tantamount to participation in, or acquiescence to, societal decline, rest assured that many such arguments have been made in various model forums.  It's one of the most common arguments I see against such modeling.

Secondly, I'm not making a distinction between activities that are legal or illegal, merely noting that the world we model of necessity contains a lot of negative aspects of human activity.  From what I've observed, many hobbyists attach value judgments differently to modeling of graffiti than they do toward other activities.  In my eyes, a blighted structure foisted onto the the scene by a negligent property owner, a clear cut, an auto junkyard, or an open pit mine, is just as ugly as a graffiti covered freight car, but I've yet to see the hobby community reject such models the same way they so often react to graffiti.  Even if it's all ugly, different reactions are the norm.

Lastly, the Reverse Running column is always about divergent views.  I figured on adding some more food for thought, not a word of which was aimed at any particular individual.