Train Tag

Have you noticed that most train cars have been the victim of the notorious taggers. Some of these vandal taggers are real artists and their work is beautiful, but some are just vandalism. The tags have become prevalent everywhere, on buildings, highway overpasses, retaining walls and train cars. Some of these train car tags are limited to the bottom easily accessible section of the cars, but some are big enough to cover the entire car. While visiting Portugal, we saw some tags that completely covered the entire car, including the windows so you had to choose cars that were not painted if you wanted to see out. 

On this trip on the VIA Rain Canadian I started really noticing these train tags as the freight trains passed our cabin window, and I got to thinking about these artists . . . .

Why are they tagging train cars? Train yards and train tracks are all behind secure fences and marked with “No Trespassing” signs, and I know the taggers enjoy the challenge of putting their tags on surfaces that are hard to reach and difficult to decorate, but why train cars? They do not stay in one place for very long, and why would you spend hours elaborately decorating something that might move to another state, province or even country the next day?

I got to wondering if perhaps there is some “Dark Web” network where these traveling tags are monitored and the location of tags are recorded and communicated. I can imagine an artist decorating a train car with his distinctive tag and then posting a photo of it on the internet where other like minded vandals might see it thousands of miles away and note the location so the original artist can track their artwork. 

I do wonder about it . . . .