Sunday, January 25, 2009

Thomas the Tank Engine never looked like this

Another rail bridge covered in graffiti - this time in Tempe.  This one is definitely on a running line - a goods train rumbled over it just after I took this photo, and it's also used by lots of passenger trains.


Surely you don't need a closedown to paint under the running lines?  I don't know about you, but I'm starting to see a pattern here - a pattern of not cleaning rail bridges.


As for the trains, a freight train went through the station when I was there.  I took 10 photos of the wagons, each photo showing 2 different wagons.  Every wagon had graffiti on it, and I didn't see the whole train.  You get the picture though - the train was a big mess.


These wagons are neither cheap nor easy to repaint.  What you are looking at here is tens of thousands of dollars damage - if not hundreds of thousands.  I don't know what the company policy is with regard to graffiti (the wagons seemed to be owned by the Manildra Group) - whether they bother to report this sort of thing to the Police, and estimate the cost of the damage.


This sort of thing just adds to the cost of a packet of flour.  Graffiti is not a "victimless crime" when the cost of it flows through to the consumer and hits the poor in the hip pocket.









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