"If you model modern this is reality"

Seems like yet another reason to model an earlier era.    

"If you model modern this is reality"

Seems like yet another reason to model modern era.   

Each year there are more and more tagged cars.  With more and bigger murals.

Ovviously railroads don’t care or they would do something about it.  Cars are never painted.  I see cars with 40 year old paint.

I appreciate all the answers--big help.  I'd always wondered about the pantographs.  The era of the graffiti was more idle wondering.

...at the rear is that if the catenary is caught and falls it will most likely fall behind the locomotive thus there is less danger to the crew, too bad for the passengers! Actually the Passengers will be safe in the cars but the crew have to get off the loco and if it is covered by live wires this can be tricky.

I have also heard it said another reason is that the dirt and crap that gets rubbed off the wires will fall behind the loco and not get into the electrical equipment which is often on top of the loco.

On the other hand, some locomotives especially in the early days had to run with both pantos up due to the way they were wired.

The PRR would on particularly bad weather days specify that both be raised. The front one would break the ice and allow the rear one to get the best contact possible to avoid arcing.

NJT operates several lines of push pull service... pantographs on Every Other car are in contact... but the trailing pantograph of each powered car is used ... thus cars 1,2,3,4 each with pantographs a & b,  had pantographs 1b and 3b raised... cars 2 and 4 are fed from either powered car.   When reversed, it would be 4a and 2a.

Graffiti started in the NYC subways in the 1970s... artists attacked the storage yards.  And the NYC Subway Police at the time had a policy of prohibiting photos in the stations. 

Just how they enforced it... ??   with elevated stations and open air operations...   They had so little control of the photos, they gave up and started enforcing trespassing more!

Once the trend had a foothold, the habit spread to neighboring RR operations.

Obviously railroads don’t care or they would do something about it.  Cars are never painted.  I see cars with 40 year old paint.

Railroads do care, First, they don't want anyone to get hurt on railroad property. Second it's vandalizing private property, the railroad police will arrest you, if they catch you. Remember the railroad police have the same authority as State police. But just like everything else in today's world, the railroad police cannot be everywhere and there are not as many on the force as there use to be. Railroads also do not want to waste the money repainting cars when that money is needed for other projects like maintaining the Right Of Way, structures, locomotives, etc. First and foremost the railroads are in business to earn a profit. Don't assume just because the railroads don't repaint freight cars after they get tagged, that they don't care, they do, but they also don't want to go bankrupt trying to repaint cars every time they are tagged.

I was wondering why locomotives always raise the rear pantograph on an electric? 

It depends on the railroad. My understanding on the Milwaukee Road West Coast Extension, the Rocky Mountain Division engineers always raised the rear pantograph, but the Coast Division engineers always used the front pantograph. 

trains were fun to watch go by. Big heralds and lots of different ones. The occasional brightly painted cars from distant places.

Then it became an era of consolidation and container cars. Trains got pretty boring to watch go by.

 Whether you like it or not they aren't boring to look at anymore.