I was excited about my new purchase today of 2 BLMA 64' reefers, and set them on the layout for a moment to admire their detail. I went inside for a couple hours and when I returned had found that some no good scoundrels had tagged my brand new cars! , I have a couple extra photos on my blog: nscaleaddiction.blogspot.com
What else is there to do way out there in them hills but tag cars that the Bulls have left unsupervised? Don't see any cows out there to tip
Well, whoever got it is one heck of an artist, those paint jobs are much nicer than a simple tag by a dude who has been huffing while painting for too long! :tb-wink: nice work on a very nice looking car! my best, Jan
Those cars are so darn beautiful it would break my heart to "tag" 'em so,no tagging here.. Nice job on "tagging" those cars.
Yes I must agree they are beautiful cars; but the Tags do make them look even more realistic. Good job those taggers did there.:tb-wink:
I once saw a new clean one go past and spent so much time gawking that I forgot to take the picture. They should paint the lower halves of the sides black and put the cars out in the usual places before putting them into service. The next morning: all white graffiti. And at least HuskerN's taggers had the thought to not cover up the car numbers.
I model a shortline that has its holding yard inside a former Military base, whihc is stil protected because they were doing depleted uranium munitions in it when it was in service. So we get children who decide to tag a train car once in a while... BUT THEY ONLY DO IT ONCE!!!!!
Ok boys, time for one of my favorite photographs of modern art of all time! So far I've only seen the BLMA cars in photographs, but from what I can tell they're a masterpiece all on their own. (But I do like the graffiti, reminds me I need to try out some decaling on some of my boxcars.) And thanks for the photo of the prototype, I was wondering if these ran only as unit trains or part of mixed freight...now I don't feel like I'd need to buy 25 of em!
Looks great Husker. I saw the UP reefer train that runs between Wallula, Washington and Selkirk, New York yesterday leaving the Hinkle Terminal in eastern Oregon and a co worker and i noticed every reefer on the train had graffiti on it.
We've kicked that around a few places and decided that the "true artist" taggers know not to cover the numbers since the RR will immediately renumber it, ruining the "art." Those look great, I can't wait to get mine.
i see 3 or 4 or them in groups sitting up in hunts point,bronx NY all the time. just like in Doug A's pic
I actually don't like the graffiti either, but it is such a common appearance that a fleet of "un-tagged" cars in N scale just isn't prototypical. At least people can look at my trains and notice the similarity between N and the real world immediately. As for the reefers, I agree that they are such a nice looking car in both N and 1:1, and the white "billboard" just seems to be a magnet for "art". I was actually talking to a friend about graffiti recently, and were discussing the time and resources needed to do some of this painting. Some of it would almost require a ladder or scaffolding. And to paint the entire side of a reefer or autorack would take an enormous amount of paint. I'm guessing that some use spray guns, as I don't think spray cans would put out enough volume.
Very large swaths of color, like backgrounds, or fill-in colors, are done with latex paint using rollers/brushes. Spray cans are always used for outlines, smaller solid spaces, shading and detail. Depending on the situation, they will either use ladders, or if it's a crew, one person will ride on the shoulders of another. Yes the more experienced and respected aerosol artists will not cover reporting marks. A number of them are actually railfans, I saw a video of one graffiti artist and he had a large Union Pacific herald tattoo on his arm, They do their own form of trainspotting too, though they look more out for pieces. They consider it exciting to put their work on a freight train that can be seen by people across the country. Not making an endorsement for their activity, just giving you the perspective from their world.
I was wondering if these ran only as unit trains or part of mixed freight...now I don't feel like I'd need to buy 25 of em! So far all the trains I've seen in Fostoria, Ohio where all unit trains. Don't know about mixed freight.
