I'll just note this piece from our local monthly arts / politics / whatever monthly publication for now while I try to figure out how to react... https://www.roccitynews.com/life/former-vandal-finds-zen-painting-graffiti-on-model-trains-16140511 (Ignore that the models are mostly entry level Horribly Oversized...)
Some people love it. Some people hate it. Graffiti may be 'art'...just not my kind of art. For me? THERR has 'naturally weathered' cars. Real rail cars get dirty. Some small dings and dents...yea...OK. That's as far as it goes. I am NOT into vandalism...witch 'unauthorized' graffiti is. JMO To each there own...c'est la vie.
That is why I have retired SEAL Team dogs patrolling my yards and sidings...... They know how to disburse the vandals, and they can out run them......
That's a fine solution. I keep waiting for Micro-Trains to offer an N Scale version of Lionel's 3535 Atomic Energy Commission Security Car with a roof mounted automatic cannon to protect my yard from "artists" with rattle cans.
I don’t even care for the paper’s headline. What is “former” about this guy? Says right in the article he hopped into a railyard to do one up the previous month. “Intermittent” vandal at best.
This makes me miss the day when idiots were only "tagging" subway cars and not pushing old people in front of them.
Still shaking my head that taggers have successfully sued for copyright infringement on their vandalism.
Thanks for this. It's nice to have this post that reminds us of the fun we're here for. I miss my old Lionel trains.
Always mixed feelings about this. I dislike graffiti and despise tagging. However, I do like the idea of this fellow finding an outlet painting his own property. I have four tall walls surrounding a property I own in ye olde England, which have never been touched yet....Maybe the thought of medieval punishments and being dragged around the cobbled streets behind my Harley keeps them away...
Another thing I don’t like about the article: the author lumps into the “vandalism” category, the railroad yard workers’ practice of writing arrival & departure info & contents on the cars. That is yard management, not vandalism. Just another stupid moral equivalency exercise to justify deviancy.
When a "person" uses the private property of another, without appropriate permission, as their "canvas", it is not and never would be "art". Promoting it as "art" is simply a lie told by a fool. In the past when these topics have come along, I have mentioned being the victim of such scum. I will never try to be even slightly polite when talking about it. That gutter trash defaced a commercial property I owned years ago. The time and cost of of cleaning up after these useless dregs of our society, which moronic opiners among us believe we should tolerate and normalize, is something they all need to suffer. Unfortunately they are likely too stupid to ever comprehend.....
Amen to that, Boxcab! I was brought up by my folks with an ingrained respect for other people's property, private or public. It would never cross my mind to deface, degrade or damage someone else's hard-earned property. Nor would I tolerate it being done to mine. It's a "do unto others" case. Graffiti is not art (for that matter, some legitimate art is misnamed, but that's another can of worms). It's vandalism. It's a crime. A civil society is based on law and order, and respect for each other's personal and material integrity. Start eating away at that base, and society will eventually crumble. Not my cup of tea. Or coffee.
I will admit that there have been times I've thought about scrawling "UMTRR Rules!" on a freight car just to see if anyone would notice. Instead, I did one of my own N Scale cars...
